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THE   FIRST  EDINBURGH   UNIVERSITY 
GIFFORD    LECTURES. 


PRINTED   BV   MORRISON    AND   GIBB, 
FOR 

T,    &    T.    CLARK,    EDINBURGH 

LONDON, HAMILTON,   ADAMS,   AND  CO. 

DUBLIN,       ......      GEORGE  HERBERT 

NEW  YORK,  ....      SCRIBNER  AND  WELFORD. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND   THEOLOGY 


THE  FIRST  EDINBURGH   UNIVERSITY 
GIFFORD  LECTURES 


JAMES  HUTCHISON  STIRLING,  LL.D.  (Edin.) 

FOREIGN   MEMBER   OF  THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY   OF   BERLIN 
GIFFORD    LECTURER    TO    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    EDINBURGH,    1888-90 


EDINBURGH 
T.    &    T.   CLAKK,    38    GEORGE    STREET 

1890 


[All  Eights  Reserved.] 


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These  Lectures  are  published  at  the  request  of  the 
Senatus    Academicus    of   the    University  of    Edinburgh 
NT     in  agreement   with   the   terms  of    the  Gifford    Bequest. 
Further,  they  explain  themselves. 


31G614 


CONTENTS. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

THE    BEQUEST  OF   LORD   GIFFORD — ITS   CONDITIONS. 

PACE 

Introductory — Lord  Gilford — The  bequest — The  lectureships — God 
really  all  iu  all  to  Lord  Gifford — The  lecturers — Natural  theo- 
log3r  the  only  science — The  immediate  lecturer — The  three 
Churches  —  Feeling  —  Understanding  — ■  Both  —  Intolerance  — 
Reason  as  reason — The  positive — Rationalism — Aufklarung — 
"Advanced"  views — The  temper  of  the  time — Tom  Paines  of 
the  tap — No  -  God  men — "What  is  really  the  new — The  pre- 
judice against  belief — Duty  of  philosophy  now — Sacred  books — 
Those  of  the  Hebrews — Discrepancies — Buckle,  Hume,  Voltaire 
— Historical  anachronism,    .......         3-20 

GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

NATURAL   THEOLOGY — HOW   TO    BE    TREATED. 

Natural  theology,  what  is  it  ? — Usual  answers — Hutcheson — Varro 
— The  Middle  Ages — Raymund  of  Sebonde — Rays,  Paleys,  etc. 
— Till  1860 — Since — Philosophies  of  religion — Pagan  gods — De 
I  ^uincey,  Augustine,  Cicero,  Pliny,  Juvenal,  Herodotus,  Aulas 
Gellius — The  proofs  historically  treated — That  the  theme — 
Plotinus,  Augustine — Natural  theology  not  possibly  a  physical 
science — Understanding  and  faith,  Augustine,  Anselm — 
Monotheism  alone  religion  proper  —  The  course,  affirmative, 
negative — China,  India,  Colebrooke,  Ras  bihari  Mukharji — 
Hindu  texts  (Gnostics)— Hesiod, 21-40 


Viii  CONTENTS. 

(1IFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

HISTORICAL   TREATMENT   OF   THE   PROOFS — ANAXAGORAS. 

PAGE 

Final  causes— The  four  Aristotelian  causes— Are  there  final  causes 
in  nature— Matter  and  form— Other  causes  only  to  realize  the 
final  causes— Cudworth— Adam  Smith— The  proofs,  number, 
order,  etc.— Teleology— Anaxagoras— Socrates  in  the  Phsedo— 
Xenophon— Plato— Socrates  on  Anaxagoras — The  causes  to- 
gether, concrete  —  "Abstract"  —  Forces,  Clerk  Maxwell  — 
Heraclitus — Newton — Buckle — Descartes — Gassendi — Bacon  on 
causes,  metaphysics,  and  forms — The  voZ;  (nous)  of  Anaxagoras — 
Bacon  on  design — Eeid,  Newton,  Hume  on  design— Newton,      41-59 

GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

ANAXAGORAS   AND    DESIGN. 

Anaxagoras,  the  vovs — Aristotle — Understanding — Pythagoreans — 
Pantheism— Lord  Gifford — Baghavad  Gita — The  vov;  to  Socrates, 
Plato,  Aristotle — Grote,  Schwegler,  Zeller — The  world  a  life — 
Berkeley,  Cudworth,  Plato,  Zorzi — Subject  and  object — Nature 
and  thought — Externality  and  internality — Bruno — Universal 
and  particular — Spinoza — Physical  theories — Space  and  time — 
Hodgson,  Carlyle,  Berkeley,  Reid,  Leibnitz,  Kant — But  for  an 
eye  and  an  ear,  the  world  utterly  dark,  utterly  silent,  .       60-78 

GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

DESIGN  GENERALLY — SOCRATES. 

Astronomy,  space,  time,  the  vauj— Kant,  Fichte,  Schilling— Carlyle, 
the  Sartor — Emerson  —  Plato — Aristotle— A  beginning  —  The 
want  of  eye  and  ear  again  —  Deafness  and  blindness  together 
— Design  restored — Thomson — Diogenes  of  Apollonia — Socrates 
— Meteorology  and  practical  action — Morality  and  ethicality — 
The  first  teleological  argument — Proofs  of  design — Bacon — 
Socrates  finally, 79-96 

GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

DESIGN — PLATO. 

Plato — His  position — His  prose — Indebted  to  Socrates — Monotheism 
— The  popular  gods — Socrates'  one  principle— His  method — 
Universalized  by  Plato — Epinomis — The  Tlrnaens— The  eyes, 
etc. — Kant  here — Subject   and  object — Mechanical   and   final 


CONTENTS.  IX 

PAGE 

causes— The  former  only  for  the  latter— Identity  and  difference 
—Creation,  the  world— Time  and  eternity— The  Christian 
Trinity— The  two  goods— Religion,  the  Laws— Prayer— Super- 
stition— Hume,  Dugald  Stewart,  Samuel  Johnson,  Buckle— The 
Platonic  duality— Necessity  and  contingency — Plato's  work,     97-114 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

THE   SOPHISTS— THEIR  NEGATIVE.      ARISTOTLE. 

Sophists— Aufklarung — Disbelief,  Simon  of  Tournay,  Amairich  of 
Bena,  David  of  Dinant — Italian  philosophers,  Geneva  Socinians, 
Bacon,  Hobbes,  the  Deists,  Locke,  Descartes,  Spinoza — Hume, 
Gibbon — Germany,  Reimarus,  etc.— Klopstock,  Lavater — Less- 
ing,  Hanmim,  Herder,  Jacobi — Goethe,  Schiller,  Jean  Paul — 
Carlyle — France — Kant  and  his  successors — Necessary  end  of 
such  movements — Cosmological  argument — Locke,  Clarke,  Leib- 
nitz— Aristotle — Dependency— Potentiality  and  actuality  —  A 
beginning — Aristotle  and  design — Mr.  Darwin's  mistake — Em- 
pedocles  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest,       ....     115-134 

GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  EIGHTH. 

ARISTOTLE   AND   THE  PROOFS. 

Aristotle  and  design— Matter  and  form — Abstraction — Trinity— The 
ascent — The  four  causes — A  first  mover — Lambda  of  the  Meta- 
physic  —  The  hymn  of  Aristotle  —  Speculation  —  Mankind— 
Erdmann — Theory  and  practice — Nature — Kant,  Byron,  lime. 
de  Genlis — Aristotle's  ethic  and  politic — God — Cicero — Time — 
Design— Hume,  Buffon— Plato  and  Aristotle— Immanent  Div- 
inity and  transcendent  Deity— Schwegler— Bonitz— The  soul- 
Unity — Homer — The  Greek  movement  up  to  Aristotle,  Biese — 
The  Germans  and  Aristotle— Cuvier,  Owen,  Franzius,  Johann 
von  Muller — Darwin — Aristotle  in  conclusion,   .         .         .     135-156 

GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

THE   SECTS  AND   THE  PROOFS — CICERO. 

The  Sects— The  Skeptics— The  Epicureans— Epicurus— Leucippus 
and  Democritus— Aristotle,  Plato— Stoics,  Pantheism— Chry- 
sippus— Origin  of  evil— Antithesis — Negation— Epictetus — The 
Neo-Platonists — Important  six  hundred  years — Course  of  his- 


Xii  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

analogy — The  supreme  cause  not  situated  as  other  causes  — 
other  principles,  vegetation,  generation — The  world  an  animal 
— The  Empedoclean  expedient — The  effect  only  warrants  great 
power,  not  Almighty  power — Evil — Free  opinion — Hume's 
friends  ■  Epicurus's  dilemma  —  Superstition  results  —  Four 
suggestions — No  pain — Special  volitions — Greater  strength — 
Extremes  banished  from  the  world— Creation  on  general  prin- 
ciples— Erasmus  Darwin — Mr.  Froude,  Carlyle — Finitude  as 
such,  externality  as  such — Antithesis — Charles  V. — Abdal- 
rahman  III.  —  Septimius  Severus  —  Johnson  —  Per  contra — 
Wordsworth,  Gibbon,  Hume — Work,  Carlyle — The  trades — 
• !( imparison — Self-contradiction  —  Identity  —  Hegel  — "As  re- 
gards Protoplasm  " — The  Hindoos — Burton  on  cause — Sir  John 
Herschel  —  Brown,  Dugald  Stewart  —  Spinoza  — ■  Erdmann — 
Notions  and  tilings,  Erigena — Rabelais — Form  and  matter — 
1 1  ume  in  conclusion,        .......       265-285 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

KANT    ON   THE   PROOFS. 

Transition,  Hume  to  Kant — Effect  of  Kant  on  natural  theology 
—The  centre  of  Kant's  thought — Hume  led  to  this — Causal 
necessity — That  necessity  objective — Still  in  matters  of  fact — 
Relations  of  ideas — Hume  on  one  side,  Kant  on  the  other,  of  the 
dilemma — Hume  quite  as  Reid,  on  natural  necessity — But  what 
the  explanation  to  intellectual  insight — Synthetic  addition — 
Analytic  implication — Change — Kant's  explanation  is,  There 
are  a  priori  syntheses  native  to  the  mind — The  whole  Kantian 
machinery  in  a  sentence — Time  and  space — The  twelve  cate- 
gories and  the  three  ideas — A  toy  house — A  peculiar  magic 
lantern  —  A  psychology  —  A  metaphysic — Analysis  of  the 
syllogism  for  the  ideas — Simple  apprehension  missed — An  idea 
—The  ideal— The  teleological  proof,  ....       286-304 


(ilFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

KANT   AND   THE   PROOFS    (concluded). 

The  cosmological  proof — Contingency — Ab  alio  e.sse  and  esse  a  se — 
The  special  contingency  an  actual  fact  in  experience — This 
Kant  -would  put  out  of  sight  —  Jehovah  —  Two  elements  in 
the  argument,  experience  and  ideas — The  generality  of  the 
experience  —  Also  of  the  idea  —  Contingency  is   a  particular 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

empirical  fact — Ens  realissimum — Onlythe  ontological  argument 

in  disguise — Logical  inference  —  But  jusl  generally  the  all- 
necessarv  being  of  such  a  world  —  Hume  anticipated  Kant — 
Why  force  analogy — Why  transcend  nature — No  experience  of 
such  cause,  which  must  not  exceed  the  effect— Hume's  early 
memoranda— The  "nest" — All  Kant  dependent  on  his  own 
constanl  sense  of  school-distinctions — His  entire  world — The 
system  being  true,  what  is  true  ? — The  ontological  argument — 
No  thinking  a  thing  will  bring  it  to  be — "What  it  all  comes  to, 
the  single  threefold  wave — Hegel — Middle  Age  new  from 
Augustine  to  Tauler — Meister  Eckhart — Misunderstanding  of 
mere  understanding  —  The  wickedest  then  a  possible  divine 
reservoir — Adam  Smith  and  the  chest  of  drawers — Absurd  f"i 
Kant  to  make  reason  proper  the  "transcendent  shine" — Tin- 
Twelfth  Night  cake,  hut  the  ehrliche  Kant,       .        .        .       305-322 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

1 1  \i;WIN    AND   DESIGN. 

The  three  degrees,  positive,  comparative,  superlative  in  negation  of 
the  proofs,  or  Hume,  Kant,  Darwin — The  Life  and  Letters  of 
Charles  Darwin,  chapter  viii.  of  the  first  volume — Darwin  one 
of  the  best  of  men — Design — Uniformity  and  law— Darwin's 
own  words  —  He  himself  always  gentle  —  But  resolute  to 
win — Concessiveness — Religious  sentiment — Disbelief — Jokes — 
Natural  selection  being,  materialism  is  true,  and  ideas  are  only 
derivative  —  The  theory  —  A  species  what  —  Sterility — What 
suggested  natural  selection  to  Darwin — Bakewell's  achievements 
as  a  breeder — Darwin  will  substitute  nature  for  Bakewell,  to  the 
production,  not  of  new  breeds,  but,  absolutely,  of  new  species — 
His  lever  to  this,  change  by  natural  accidenl  and  chance  :  such 
warily  proving  either  advantageous,  disadvantageous,  oi 
indifferent — Advantage  securing  in  the  struggle  for  life  survival 
of  the  fittest,  disadvantage  entailing  death  and  destruction, 
indifference  being  out  of  count — The  woodpecker,  the  mi 
— But  mere  variation  the  very  fulcrum— Variation  must  be,  and 
consequences  to  the  organism  must  he:  hence  thewholi  Bu1 
never  design,  only  a  mechanical  pullulation  of  differences  by 
chance  that  simply  prom  advantageous  or  disadvantageou  . 
— Conditions— Mr.  Huxley— Effed  of  the  announcements  of 
Sir  Joseph  Hooker  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell— Mr.  Darwin  insists 
on  his  originality — His  difficulties  in  winning  his  way 
these  who  agree  with  him,  as  Lyell,  Hooker,  and  others,  he 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

demurs  to  their  expressions:  they  fail  to  understand— Mr. 
Darwin's  own  qualms — "What  makes  a  tuft  of  feathers  come 
on  a  cock's  head,  or  moss  on  a  moss-rose  ?  " — That  the  question 
—Still  spontaneous  variation  both  universal  and  constant,       323-342 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

daravin  and  design  (continued). 

The  theory — Individual  variation — Darwin  early  looked  for  natural 
explanation  of  design— Creation,  its  senses— Antisthenes,  Cole- 
brooke,  Cudworth — Creative  ideas — Anaxagoras  —  Aristotle — 
Mr.  Clair  Grece  and  Darwin — For  design  Mr.  Darwin  offers  a 
mechanical  pullulation  of  individual  difference  through  chance, 
but  with  consequent  results  that  as  advantageous  or  dis- 
advantageous seem  concerted — The  Fathers — Nature  the  pheno- 
menon of  the  noumenon,  a  boundless  externality  of  contingency 
that  still  is  a  life — Nature,  the  object  will  only  be  when  it 
reaches  the  subject — That  object  be,  or  subject  be,  both  must 
be  —  Even  the  crassest  material  particle  is  already  both 
elementarily  —  As  it  were,  even  inorganic  matter  possesses 
instincts — Aristotle,  design  and  necessity  —  Internalization — 
Time  space,  motion,  matter  —  The  world  —  Contingency — A 
perspective  of  pictures— The  Vestiges  and  evolution — Darwin 
deprecates,  genealogies,  but  returns  to  them — The  mud-fish — 
Initial  proteine — There  are  so  many  mouths  to  eat  it  up  now 
— Darwin  recants  his  pentateuchal  concession  to  creation — 
Depends  on  "fanciers  and  breeders" — The  infinitudes  of 
transition  just  taken  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  a  step — Hypothesis — 
Illustration  at  random — Difference  would  go  on  to  difference, 
not  return  to  the  identity — Mr.  Lewes  and  Dr.  Erasmus — The 
grandfather's  filament — Seals — The  bear  and  the  whale — Dr. 
Erasmus  on  the  imagination,  on  weeping,  on  fear,  on  the 
tadpole's  tail,  on  the  rationale  of  strabismus,    .         .         .       343-362 

GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

darwin  and  design  (continued). 

Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin — Student  scribbles  on  Zoonomia  —  Family 
differences,  attraction  and  repulsion  —  The  Darwins  in  this 
respect — Dr.  Erasmus  of  his  sons,  Mr.  Charles  and  Dr.  R.  W. — 
Dr.  R.  W.  as  to  his  sons — Charles  on  his  grandfather,  father, 
brother — Mr.  Erasmus  on  his  brother's  book — On  the  a  priori 
— On  facts— Darwin's  one  method — Darwin  and   Hooker  on 


CONTENTS.  XV 

PAGE 

facts  — Family  politics  —  Family  religion  —  Family  habits- 
Family  theories— .Mr.  Darwin's  endowments — His  Journal — 
The  Zoonomia — Theories  of  Dr.  Erasmus — l'aley — Instinct— 
An  idea  to  Dr.  E.  —  Dugald  Stewart  —  Picture-thinking— 
Dr.  E.'s  method— Darwin's  doubts  — His  brave  spirit— The 
theory  to  his  friends— Now— Almost  every  propos  of  the  grand- 
son has  its  germ  in  the  grandfather  (Krause) — Yet  the  position 
of  the  latter— Byron  on— Mr.  Lewes  also— The  greater  Newton, 
original  Darwinism  now  to  be  revived — Dr.  E.  admirable  on 
design  -Charles  on  cats  made  by  God  to  play  with  mice!— 
Dr.  E.  on  atheism— The  apology — P»ut  will  conclude  with  a 
single  point  followed  thoroughly  out :  the  Galapagos — Darwin 
held  to  be  impregnably  fortified  there— The  Galapagos  thrown 
up  to  opponents  at  every  turn — But  we  are  not  naturalists  !  — 
Dr.  E.  rehabilitates  us  —  Description  of  the  Galapagos  from 
the  Journal  —  The  islands,  their  size,  number,  position, 
geographical  and  relative— Depth  of  water  and  distance  between 
— Climate,  currents,  wind — Geology,  botany,  zoology — Vol- 
canoes, dull  sickly  vegetation,  hills,  craters,  lava,  pits,  heat, 
salt-pools,  water— Tortoises,  lizards,  birds— Quite  a  region  to 
suggest  theory,         ........       363-381 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

DAKWIN    AMI    DESIGN  —  (conclusion). 

The  action— South  American  types,  left  here  to  themselves,  change 
into  new  species  from  accumulation  of  their  own  individual 
spontaneous  differences— The  birds — Differences  in  the  times 
and  modes  of  arrival  between  land  and  sea  birds — Carte  and 
tierce— Contradiction — Parried  by  a  word — An  advocate's  proof 
—The  printer  and  Mr.  Darwin's  wordda— The  sea-gull— The 
finches— Sir  William  Jardine— The  process  to  Darwin— What 
was  to  him  "a  new  birth" — Where  the  determinative  advant- 
age for  these  different  beaks — The  individual  central  islands  not 
incommunicably  separate — French  birds  at  Dover— Isolation — 
Ex-contrario— Individual  difference  the  single  secret,  that  is 
the  "law  "  which  has  been  "  discovered  "  of  "  natural  selection  " 
—Apply  influence  of  external  conditions  to  the  Galapagos- 
Kant— The  Galapagos  rat  and  mouse— New  beings  but  yet  the 
old  names— If  difference  goes  always  on  only  to  difference 
without  return  to  identity,  why  are  there  not  infinitely  more 
species  ?— Bowen — Darwin  only  empedoclean — Parsons — Lyell 
—  Ministers  (giants  ami  dwarfs)  sterile— Frederick's  grenadiers, 


xvi  CONTEXTS. 

PAGE 

the  pygmies — Divergent  species  at  home — The  Galapagos  but 
the  Mr.  Jorkins  of  the  Darwinians — The  tortoise,  where  did 
it  come  from  ? — The  amblyrhyncus  similarly  inexplicable — 
Lizards  of  the  secondary  epoch — The  Galapagos  Islands  ab- 
solutely without  a  vestige  of  the  struggle  for  life  in  any 
direction— The  breeder,  and  nature,  can  act  only  on  what  is 
already  there — The  breeder  deals  in  identity,  not  difference, 
and  his  breeds  would  all  turn  back  to  the  original — No  breeder 
a  new  species — Nature  acts  not  on  Darwin's  method,  but  design 
— Toothed  birds,  the  hipparion,  the  otter-sheep — Accidental 
individual  difference  to  be  the  sole  creator  in  the  end  of  all 
that  enormous  and  infinitely  complicated  concert  to  unity  ! — 
Farewell, 382-400 

Index, 401 


THE   FIEST   COURSE   OF   LECTURES 
THE    AFFIRMATIVE. 

1889. 


PHILOSOPHY    AND    THEOLOGY 


GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  FIEST. 

Introductory — Lord  Gifford— The  bequest — The  lectureships — God 
really  all  in  all  to  Lord  Gifford — The  lecturers — Natural  theo- 
logy the  only  science — The  immediate  lecturer — The  three 
( 'hurches  —  Feeling  —  Understanding  —  Both  —  Intolerance — 
Reason  as  reason— The  positive — Rationalism— Aufklarung— 
"  Advanced  "  views — The  temper  of  the  time — Tom  Paim-s 
of  the  tap — No-God  men — What  is  really  the  new  —  The 
prejudice  against  belief — Duty  of  philosophy  now — Sacred 
books — Those  of  the  Hebrews — Discrepancies — Buckle,  Hume, 
Voltaire — Historical  anachronism. 

Mr.  Principal  and  Fellow-Students, — The  first  word 
that  is  due  from  a  man  in  my  position  is  necessarily  one 
of  thanks.  I  owe  it  to  the  Senatus  of  this  University 
respectfully  to  tender  it  my  best  thanks  for  the  high 
honour  it  has  done  me  in  electing  me  to  the  distinguished 
office  of  its  first  Gifford  Lecturer. 

Again,  a  word  is  no  less  due  from  me  in  respectful 
acknowledgment  of  the  rare  liberality  and  signal  generosity 
of  him  who  disinterestedly  sought  to  bestow  what  best 
boon  he  could  think  of  for  the  public,  in  the  founding  of 
this  and  the  other  University  lectureships  which  bear 
his  name. 

I  have  had  but  few  opportunities  of  acquaintanceship 
with  the  late  Lord  Gifford.  I  have,  however,  met  him 
over  the  dinner-table  and  elsewhere;  and  1  could  not 
but    like   what  I   saw  in  him.     He  had  eminently  the 


4  GIFFOBD  LECTCJBE  THE  FIB 

bearing  of  an  honourable  gentleman  who  held  In'-;  own 
ground  With  a  smile, there  was  humour  on  the  mouth; 
hut  there  was  at  the  same  time  a  look  of  shrewdness  in 
viih  a  certain  firm  stability  of  the  chin  and  the 
whole  countenance,  that  intimated  as  plainly  as  anywords 
could:  I  am  >le,  open,  willing ;  but,  have  a   care 

that  you  neitb  «ed      Eewa  ,loyal, 

.  generous  in  his  affirmation  of  merit-  but  neither 
r  nor  unjust  in  his  negation  of  demerit  and  insuffici- 
He  was  good-natured:  he  could  listen  to  what 
it  of  place,  or  doubtfully  off  even,  in  a  per- 

sonal regard,  and  keep  silence  with  a  smile  on  his  Lips. 
That  he  was  skilful  and  successful  as  a  lawyer  ;  esteemed, 
sted,  honoured  as  a  judge, — that  is  a  matter  of  public 
.lir.ion.     To  me  if.  belongs  rather  to  noteth 
a   lover  of  books.      The  houi 
he    spent    with    the  writings  of  his  favourite   autl 
foremost  among  whom  were  the 

ttion  :  and,  of  them  all,  that  it  was  Emerson  for 
whom,  perhaps,  he  entertained  specially  a  predilection, 
vouches  for  hi  J  Hither,  no 

we  know  that  not  philosophy  only,  hut  reli 
at  his  heart,  and   mu  tituted   there   a 

familiar  theme  of  and  persistent  mi  m.     I 

did  not  think  of  that  then  as  I  met  him  often  in 
about  Granton.      I  did  not  think  of  that  then  as  I 
hirn  trailing  I.  alytic  limbs  along,  but  hold- 

ing his  head  bi  .d  looking  imperturbably  b 

him,  as,  within  his  ope;.  still  placed  a  broad  chest, 

as  it  were,  in   front  of  all   the  accident-,  of   time.      That, 
in   these    oirc  the    impre-sion    he 

.-.  me.     Ik:  was  for  months 
confined  to  the  ho  .  fch ;  but, doubtl 

in  these  walks  at  that  time  he  was  meditating  th. 
'.  that  is  tl  don  of  our  being  at  pre  tther. 


THE  IJEQUEST.  5 

And  to  that  bequest  it  is  now  my  duty  to  turn  ;  for, 
clearly,  the  very  first  necessity  of  the  case  is  to  know 
what  that  service  specially  is  which  the  Testator  expected 
to  be  rendered  to  the  University  and  the  public  in  return 
for  his  own  munificence. 

1  have  Bpoken  of  Lord  Gilford  as  pondering  in  his 
mind  what  best  boon  lie  could  find  it  within  his  power 
to  bestow  upon  the  public  ;  and  about  the  very  first 
words  of  the  Extracts  from  his  Trust  Disposition  and 
Settlement  bear  me  out  in  this.  "  I,  having  fully  and 
maturely  considered  my  means  and  estate,  and  the  modes 
in  which  my  surplus  funds  may  be  most  usefully  and 
beneficially  expended,  and  considering  myself  bound  to 
apply  part  of  my  means  in  advancing  the  public  welfare 
and  the  cause  of  truth  :  "  from  these  words  it  is  plain 
thai  Lord  Gifford,  finding  himself  in  possession  of  what 
appeared  to  him  more  than  was  necessary  for  the  satis- 
faction and  fulfilment  of  all  his  private  duties,  claims, 
wishes,  or  intentions,  felt  himself  in  presence  with  the 
rest  of  a  public  burden  which  he  was  bound  to  discharge. 
How,  for  the  public  welfare  and  the  cause  of  truth,  that 
could  be  most  usefully  and  beneficially  effected,  was  the 

next  thought.       And    so,   as    he    says    further,    "  being    of 

opinion  that  1  am  bound  if  there  is  a  '  residue  '  as  so  ex- 
plained, to  employ  it,  or  part  of  it,  for  the  good  of  my 
fellow-men,  and  having  considered  how  I  may  best  do  SO, 
I  direct  the  '  residue '  to  be  disposed  of  as  follows: — I, 

having  been  for  many  years  deeply  ami  firmly  convinced 

that  the  true  knowledge  of  God,  that  is,  of  the  Being, 
Nature,  and  Attributes  of  the  Infinite,  of  the  All,  of  the 

First  and  the  Only  Cause,  that  LS  the  One  and  Only  Sub- 
stance and  Being;  and  the  true  and  felt  knowledge  (not 
mere  nominal  knowledge)  of  the  relations  of  man  and  of 
the  universe  to  llim,  and  of  the  true  foundations  of  all 
ethics    and    morals, —  being,    1    say,   convinced    that    this 


6  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

knowledge,  when  really  felt  and  acted  on,  is  the  means  of 
man's  highest  well-being,  and  the  security  of  his  upward 
progress,  I  have  resolved,  from  the  '  residue  '  of  my  estate 
as  aforesaid,  to  institute  and  found,  in  connection,  if  pos- 
sible, with  the  Scottish  Universities,  lectureships  or  classes 
for  the  promotion  of  the  study  of  said  subjects,  and  for 
the  teaching  and  diffusion  of  sound  views  regarding  them." 
From  these  words  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  con- 
clusion of  Lord  Gifford's  mind  as  to  how,  in  satisfaction 
of  a  public  obligation  which  he  felt  lay  upon  him,  he 
could  best  employ  an  expected  "  residue  "  of  his  estate, 
was  the  institution  and  foundation  of  certain  lectureships 
in  Natural  Theology.      The  lectureships  in  question,  in 
fact,  are,  within  inverted  commas,  formally  described  as 
established   for   "  Promoting,  Advancing,    Teaching,   and 
Diffusing  the  Study  of  Natural  Theology."     That  is  ex- 
press ;  there  is  no  possible  mistake  of,  or  possible  escape 
from,   the   bare   term  itself ;  and  just   as  little  are  we 
allowed  any  possible  mistake  of,  or  possible  escape  from, 
what  Lord  Gifford  himself  literally  prescribes  as  his  own 
whole  will  and  meaning  in  the  term.     Natural  Theology 
is,  for  Lord  Gifford,  in  precise  "  other  words,"  and  with  the 
same  distinction  of  inverted  commas,  "  The  Knowledge  of 
God,  the  Infinite,  the  All,  the  First  and  Only  Cause,  the 
One  and  the  Sole   Substance,  the   Sole  Being,  the  Sole 
Reality,  and  the  Sole  Existence,  the  Knowledge  of  His 
Nature  and  Attributes,  the  Knowledge  of  the  Relations 
which   man  and  the  whole  universe  bear  to   Him,   the 
Knowledge  of  the  Nature  and  Foundation  of  Ethics  or 
Morals,  and  of  all  Obligations  and  Duties  thence  arising." 
All  here,  we  see,  is  formal  and  express ;  and  everything 
is  done  that  can  be  done  by  capital  letters  and  inverted 
commas,  by  word  upon  word  and  phrase  upon  phrase,  to 
cut  off  the  very  possibility  of  any  failure  to  understand. 
That  is  the  technical  scroll,  style,  title,  and  designation  of 


GOD  ALL  IN  ALL  TO  LORD  GIFFORD.  7 

the  business  that  is  in  hand.  That  is  the  Purview  of  the 
Lecturer :  these  are  his  Instructions. 

Further,  indeed,  and  more  expressly  as  regards  the 
lecturers,  he  says  this:  "I  have  intentionally  indicated 
the  general  aspect  which  personally  I  would  wish  the 
lectures  to  bear,  but  the  lecturers  shall  be  under  no  re- 
straint whatever  in  their  treatment  of  their  theme  .  .  . 
provided  only  that  the  '  patrons '  will  use  diligence  to 
secure  that  they  be  able,  reverent  men,  true  thinkers, 
sincere  lovers  of,  and  earnest  inquirers  after,  truth." 
These,  then,  briefly  are  Lord  Gifford's  views  in  regard  to 
the  lecturers ;  while,  as  for  the  lectures,  we  have  already 
learned  that  they  are  to  promote  the  teaching  and  diffu- 
sion of  "  sound  views  "  in  respect  of  Natural  Theology. 
Now  the  whole  question  here  is — What  did  Lord  Gilford 
mean  by  "  sound  views  "  ?  This,  in  the  first  place,  is 
plain,  that  Lord  Gifford  wished  the  "  sound  views "  he 
desiderated  to  be  independent  of  Revelation  ;  but,  in  the 
second  place,  Revelation  apart,  he  undoubtedly  expected 
the  phrase  to  be  understood  as  it  is  ordinarily  understood 
— and  that  is  on  the  serious  and  affirmative  side. 

■Unless  we  can  suppose  that  Lord  Gifford  could,  in  such 
serious  and  solemn  circumstances,  descend  to  a  paltry 
quibble  and  an  unworthy  irony,  we  must  believe  that  the 
phrase  bore  for  him,  and  must  have  borne  for  him,  the  only 
signification  that  is  given  to  it  in  current  usage.  But  we 
can  say  more  than  that.  Lord  Gifford  himself  expressly 
tells  us,  "  I  have  intentionally  indicated,  in  describing  the 
subject  of  the  lectures,  the  general  aspect  which  'personally 
I  would  expect  the  lectures  to  bear ;  "  and  with  such  an 
avowal  as  that  before  us,  there  can  be  no  great  difficulty 
in  coming  to  a  certainty  of  assurance  as  regards  what 
was  peculiarly  meant  by  the  expression  "  sound  views." 
Lord  Gifford  tells  us  that  his  personal  expectation  as 
regards  the  general  aspect  of  the  lecturers  has  been  "  in- 


8  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

tentionally  indicated  "  by  himself,  and  that  we  shall  find 
as  much  in  his  description  of  the  "  subject  "  of  the  lectures. 
We  are  not  even  allowed  a  moment's  hesitation  in  the 
reference,  then  ;  for  not  only  do  we  know  that  the  subject 
is  Natural  Theology,  but  we  know  also,  and  that,  too,  in 
all  fulness  and  completeness  of  detail,  Lord  Gifford's  own 
definition  of  the  subject.     We  need  but  recall  a  phrase 
or  two  here  to  have  the  whole  before  us  again,  and  to  feel 
relieved  from  all  doubt  relatively.     "  The  First  and  Only 
Cause,"  "  the  Sole  Being,"  "  the  greatest  of  all  possible 
sciences, — indeed,  in  one  sense,  the  only  science,  that  of 
Infinite  Being," — surely  when  Lord  Gifford  solicits  "  sound 
views  "  on  such  subjects,  and  so  expressed,  he  is  speaking 
affirmatively,  and  not  negatively  ;  seriously,  and  not  mock- 
ingly.    The  whole  tone  of  any  relative  wording  all  through 
is    one    of    reverent    belief  in,    and  reverent  desire  for. 
the  realization  of  religion.      His  solemn  last  words  are 
these :  "  I  give  my  body  to   the  earth  as  it  was  before, 
in  order  that  the  enduring  blocks  and  materials  thereof 
may  be  employed  in  new  combinations ;   and  I  give  my 
soul  to  God,  in  Whom,  and  with  Whom,  it  always  was. 
to  be  in  Him,  and  with  Him  for  ever  in  closer  and  more 
conscious  union."     These  sublime  and  solemn,  almost  awe- 
ing,  last  words  comport  but  ill  with  <:  sound  views,"  in  the 
construction  that  would  make  them  only  ironical  and  a 
mock.      I  have  no  desire  to  strain  the  situation  to  any 
undue  extreme  ;  it  is  not  my  wish  to  make  a  Saint  Simeon 
Stylites  of  Lord  Gifford  in  the  matter  of  Bevelation,  nor  yet 
an  antique  ruling  elder  in  rigidity  of  Confession  and  the 
Creed.     As  to  that  I  know  nothing.      How  it  was  situated 
with  Lord  Gifford  as  regards  any  particular  religious  body 
or  persuasion,  is  beyond  my  ken.      I  know  only  this,  and 
the  document  so  long  before  us  bears  ample  testimony  to 
the  fact,  that,  during  these  suffering  last  years  of  Lord 
Gifford,  it  must  have  been  the  subject  of  religion  that 


THE  LECTURERS.  ■> 

occupied  his  whole  mind  and  heart.      The  proof  is   his 
Testament  and  Will,  in  which  he  is  not  content  to  concern 
himself  only  with  the  things  of  earth  and  his  worldly 
relations,  but  in  which  he  draws  nigh  also  to  his  God  and 
his  heritage  on  the  other  side.      "  I  give  my  soul  to  God," 
he  says,  "in  Whom,  and  with  Whom,  it  always  was,  to  be  in 
Him,  and  with  Him  for  ever  in  closer  and  more  conscious 
union."     What,  in  a  religious  sense,  Lord  Gifford  personally 
felt,  and  what,  in  a  religious  sense,  as  regards  his  lecturers, 
he  personally  expected  or  desired,  I  shall  hold  now  to  have 
been  made  conclusively  plain.      It  is  equally  plain,  at  the 
same  time,  that  Lord  Gifford  had  no  wish  in  any  way  to 
trammel  his  lecturers,  or  to  bind  them  down  to  any  express 
articles,  provided  always  that  whatever  they  advocated 
was    advocated    only  by  them    as  "reverent    men,  true 
thinkers,  sincere  lovers    of,  and  earnest  inquirers  after, 
truth."     No  doubt  that  is  true ;  though  I  think  we  may 
also  take  it  for  granted,  from  the  whole  tone  and  general 
drift  of  his  expressions,  that  it  was  the  serious  side  he 
would  wish  to  see  triumphant  in  the  world,  and  prevailing 
in  the  lives  of  men.     "  My  desire  and  hope  " — this  is  his 
own,  most  unambiguous  declaration  towards  the  close — 
"my  desire  and  hope  is  that  these  lectureships  and  lectures 
may  promote  and  advance  among  all  classes  of  the  com- 
munity the  true  knowledge  of  Him  Who  is,  and  there  is 
none  and  nothing  besides  Him,  in  Whom  we  live   and 
move  and  have  our  being,  and  in  Whom  all  things  consist, 
and  of  man's  real  relation  to  Him  Whom  truly  to  know  is 
life  everlasting." 

Now,  coming  from  such  considerations  as  these,  it  is 
not  unnatural  that  the  question  should  suggest  itself, 
And  how  of  the  lecturer, — how  is  he  situated  in  regard 
to  the  momentous  interests  which  have  been  before  us  ? 
Of  course  there  is  no  necessity  in  the  bond  that  the 
lecturer,  whom  it  has  been   the  care  of   the  patrons   to 


10  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

appoint,   should   declare   himself  before   he   lectures,  or, 
simply,  further  and  otherwise  than  as  he  lectures.      Still 
it  might  be  convenient  did  he  contrive  to  let  his  hearers 
have  some  inkling  beforehand,  generally,  of  what  spirit 
and  drift  they  might  expect  from  him.      Fielding,  in  one 
of  his  novels,  tells  us  that,  when  we  dine  with  a  gentle- 
man who  gives  a  private  treat,  we  must  not  find  fault, 
but  cheerfully  accept  whatever  fare  he  pleases ;  whereas, 
in  the  case  of  an  ordinary,  with  a  bill  of  fare  in  the 
window,  we  can  see  for  ourselves,  and  either  enter  or 
turn  away  a*  it  suits  us.      This  hint,  which  only  bears 
on  physical  food,  Fielding  does  not  disdain  to  borrow  in 
respect  of  food  otherwise.     Following  his  example,  then, 
let  us  prefix,  not  exactly  now  a  bill  of  fare  (which  will 
come    later),  but   an   explanation,   so   far,  in   regard   to 
creed.       But    that    amounts    to    a    religious    confession, 
whereas  it  may  seem  that  Lord  Giffbrd  himself  deprecates 
or  disapproves  all  such.      It  is  certain  that,  according  to 
the  terms  of  the  document,  all  previous  declarations  are 
unnecessary ;  but  still  it  cannot  be  said  that  there  is  any 
actual  prohibition   of   them,  either  expressed  or  under- 
stood.     Lord  Gilford  himself,  as  I   have  attempted  to 
show,  has  made  no  secret  of  his  own  convictions  on  the 
general  question ;  and  without  at  all  desiring  to  set  up  a 
compulsory  precedent  for  others,  we  may,  without  impro- 
priety,  follow   his   example.       I   am   a   member   of    the 
National  Church,  and  would  not  willingly  run  counter 
to   whatever   that  involves.       Again,  as   is   seen   at   its 
clearest  and  most  definite  in  the  sister  Church  farther 
south,  perhaps, — there  are   three  main   sections  of  that 
Church,  or  rather,  as  actual  speech  has  it,  in  that  one 
Church, — there    are   three    Churches.       There  is  Broad 
Church,  High  Church,  Low  or  Evangelical  Church.      I 
daresay  it  has  been  by  some  —  few  or  many,  I  know 
not — supposed  that  I  am  Broad,  and  it  is  very  certain 


THE  IMMEDIATE  LECTURER  11 

that  it  is  not  with  my  own  will  that  I  shall  be  narrow.  I 
am  an  utter  foe  to  religious  rancour — religious  intolerance 
of  any  kind.  In  that  respect  I  am  absolutely  as  Lord 
Gifford  himself  would  appear  to  have  been  from  his  own 
statements,  which  are  now,  I  hope,  clearly  in  our  minds. 
Nevertheless,  I  have  to  confess  that  I  would  quite  as  soon 
wish  to  be  considered  High  as  Broad,  and  that  the  party  to 
which  I  do  wish  to  be  considered  to  belong  is  the  Low  or 
Evangelical  one.  No  doubt  there  is  deeply  and  ineradic- 
ably  implanted  in  the  human  soul  an  original  sentiment 
which  is  the  religious  one ;  and  no  doubt  also  there  is  as 
deeply  and  ineradicably  implanted  there  a  religious  under- 
standing. We  not  only  feel,  we  know  religion.  Religion 
is  not  only  buoyed  up  on  a  sentiment  of  the  heart,  it  is 
founded  also  on  ideas  of  the  intellect.  So  it  is*  that,  if 
for  me  High  Church  seems  too  exclusively  devoted  to  the 
category  of  feeling,  Broad  Church,  again,  too  much 
accentuates  the  principle  of  the  understanding.  Now, 
if  as  much  as  this  be  true,  as  well  for  the  one  Church  as 
the  other,  it  will  not  be  incorrect  to  say  that  while  the 
Low  or  Evangelical  Church  is  neither  exclusively  High  nor 
exclusively  Broad,  it  is  in  essential  idea  both  ;  and  so  it  is 
that  it  is  on  its  side  that  I  would  wish  to  be  considered 
to  rank.  I  know  not  at  the  same  time  but  that  all  three 
Churches  have  a  common  sin,  the  sin  of  absolute  intoler- 
ance and  denial,  the  one  of  the  other.  That  I  would 
wish  otherwise  for  them  in  a  mutual  regard,  and  that  I 
would  wish  otherwise  from  them  in  my  own  regard  when 
I  point  out  this  diffi  rence  between  them  and  me,  that  what 
they  possess  in  what  is  called  the  Vorstellung,  I  rely  upon 
in  the  Begriff.  What  they  have  positively  in  the  feeling, 
or  positively  in  the  understanding,  or  positively  in  a  union 
of  both,  I  have  reflectively,  or  ideally,  or  speculatively  in 
reason.  What  the  term  positiv  amounts  to  will  be  best 
understood  by  a  reference  to  other  religions  than  our  own. 


12  G1FF0RD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

The  very  edge  and  point  of  the  positive  may  be  placed  in 
bare  will,  the  bare  will  of  another.      Mormonism  is  a 
positive  religion.     There,  says  Joseph  Smith,  holding  up 
the  book  of  Mormon,  take  that,  believe  whatever  it  says, 
and  do  what  it  tells  you.     That  is  positive  :   the  religion — 
the  book— is  just  given,  and  it  is  just  received  as  given. 
There  is  not  a  shadow  of  explanation,  not  a  shadow  of 
reasoning,  not  a  shadow  of  stipulation  on  the  one  side 
or  the  other.      So  it  is  with  Mahomet  and  the  Koran. 
Book  in  hand,  he  just  steps  forward,  and  there,  on  the 
instant,  the  Mahometan  is  at  his  feet,  simply  repeating 
the  precise  words  he  hears  read  out  to  him.      It  is  for 
the  same  reason  that  laws  are  positive.      They  rest  on 
authority  alone,  another  will  than  his  who  must  obey 
them  :   as  the  dictionary  has  it,  They  are  prescribed  by 
express   enactment   or   institution.       Nevertheless,   it    is 
implied  in  laws  and  law  that  they  as  particulars,  and  it 
as  a  whole,  are  as  much  the  will  of  him  or  them  who 
receive,  as  of   him   or  them   who  give.       Law  is  but  a 
realization  of  reason,  of  the  reason  common  to  us  all,  as 
much  yours  as  his,  as  much  his  as  yours.      So  it  is,  or  so 
it  ought  to  be,  with   religion  ;   and  there  you  have  the 
whole  matter  before  you.     He  whose  religion  rests  only 
on   the  Vorstcllung   possesses   it  positively  —  believes  it 
positively  only ;  whereas  he  with  whom  religion  rests  on 
the  Bcgriff,  has  placed  beneath  it  a  philosophical  founda- 
tion.     You  may  illustrate  this   by  a  reference  to  the 
Shorter  Catechism.     If  you  get  its  specifications  by  heart 
and,  making  them  your  own   only  so,   straightway  act 
upon    them,    then    that    is    an    illustration   of    what   is 
positive.     To  dwell  on  each  specification  separately  by 
itself  again,  making  it  to  flow  and  coalesce,  and  live  into 
its  own  inmost  meaning — that  is  to  transmute  it  into  the 
Begriff,  for  the  Begriff  is  but  the  external  material  words 
made  inward  intellectual  notion  or  idea — thought — some- 


THE  THREE  CHURCHES,  ETC.  13 

thing  from  without  converted  into  one's  own  substance 
from  within.  Not  but  thai  the  positive  has  its  own 
rights  too.  We  positively  muzzle  our  dogs,  we  positively 
bridle  our  horses,  and  we  positively  install  our  cattle  ;  and 
we  have  right  on  our  side.  In  the  same  way,  and  for 
the  same  reason,  we  positively  teach  our  children  ;  and  we 
have  no  other  resource — we  positively  must.  But  what 
we  teach  them  is  only  their  own  ;  they  follow  only  their 
own  true  selves  when  they  follow  us.  We  make  it  only 
that  they  are  free — that  it  is  absolutely  only  their  own 
true  wills  they  have,  follow,  and  obey  when  we  give  them 
the  wills  of  maturity  and  experienced  reason.  So  it  is 
that  it  has  been  a  custom  of  a  Sunday  in  Scotland  to  make 
our  children  learn  by  heart  verses  of  the  Bible  or  the 
specifications  of  the  Shorter  Catechism.  They  take  what 
they  learn  only  into  the  Vorstellung :  they  are  unable  as 
yet  to  convert  it  into  Begriff;  but  the  trust  is  that  they 
will  do  so  later.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  that  they 
should  not  do  so,  at  least  on  the  whole.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  earnest  reflection  will  remove  every  difficulty 
connected  with  the  various  articles  of  the  Book  of  Articles 
or  of  the  Larger  or  Shorter  Catechisms ;  but  I  do  say 
that  many  of  these  articles  mean  at  bottom  the  very 
deepest  and  most  essential  metaphysical  truths. 

But  it  is  not  with  that  that  we  have  to  do  at  present, 
at  the  same  time  that  it,  and  what  else  I  have  said  in 
this  connection,  will  all  serve  to  realize  to  you  the  reli- 
gious position  of  the  lecturer  as  what  we  are  concerned 
with  at  present.  And  in  that  reference  I  ought  to 
explain  that,  when  I  have  opposed  what  is  positively 
held  in  feeling,  or  understanding,  or  a  union  of  both  to 
what  is  reflectively,  ideally,  speculatively  held  in  reason, 
it  is  not  the  system  of  belief  technically  known  as 
Rationalism  that  I  have  in  mind,  whatever  relation  there 
may  exist   between  the   two  words  etymologically.     As 


14  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

the  sentence  itself  shows,  indeed,  the  term  reason  is 
opposed  by  me,  not  only  to  feeling,  but  also  to  under- 
standing ;  and  understanding  is  the  faculty,  special,  proper, 
and  peculiar,  of  Rationalism.  Rationalism,  in  fact,  means — 
in  its  religious  application — nothing  but  Aufklarung,  is 
nothing  but  the  Aufklarung,  though  claiming  a  certain  affir- 
mative side  in  its  bearing  on  religion.  The  prevailing  mind 
of  the  Aufklarung,  namely,  as  in  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  Hume, 
Voltaire,  is  seen  to  be,  in  a  religious  direction,  negative, 
so  far  at  least  as  Revelation  is  concerned  ;  whereas  the 
Aufklarung  in  the  form  of  Rationalism,  as  in  such  a 
writer  as  the  German  Reimarus,  for  example,  while 
planing  away  much,  or  perhaps  almost  all,  that  is  essen- 
tial in  religion,  makes  believe  still  to  have  an  affirmative 
attitude  to  Revelation.  Of  course,  I  need  no  more  than 
mention  the  distinction  between  understanding  and  reason, 
as  I  have  no  doubt  it  is  now  well  known  and  familiar. 
It  is  current  in  Coleridge.  I  think,  then,  there  will  no 
longer  be  any  possibility  of  misapprehension  or  mistake 
when  I  oppose  religion  as  in  reason  to  religion  as  in 
understanding ;  while  the  latter,  in  the  form  of  Ration- 
alism say,  has  to  do  only  with  what  is  conditional  and 
finite,  the  former,  in  ideal  or  speculative  religion,  would 
attain  to  converse  with  the  unconditional  and  the  infinite 
itself. 

But  though  I  am  thus  careful  to  preclude  the  danger 
of  a  religion  in  reason  being  confounded  with  Rationalism, 
it  seems  to  me  that  I  must  be  equally  careful  to  provide 
against  another  and  opposing  danger.  There  is  a  great 
prejudice  against  old  forms  now-a-days ;  and  it  is  not 
usual  for  the  advocates  of  them  to  find  themselves 
listened  to.  Advanced  views,  that  is,  what  are  called 
advanced  views,  are  very  generally,  because  advanced, 
supposed  to  represent  the  truth — at  least  the  truth  in  its 
highest    contemporary  form.      The   supporters   of    them 


RATIONALISM AUFKLARUNG.  1  5 

have  been  fighting  a  battle  against  the  old,  it  has  been 
conceived — a  battle  of  enlightenment,  progress,  and  im- 
provement against  received  prejudice,  traditional  bigotry, 
and  stereotyped  obstruction.  It  is  the  new  only  that  is 
to  be  hailed  as  the  true.  He  who,  in  any  way,  may  seem 
now  to  stand  for  the  old  must  be  but  a  hired  spadassin, 
a  gladiator,  a  Praetorian  guard,  a  bravo,  a  bully  upon 
wages.  He  cannot  have  anything  to  say  worth  hearing. 
He  must  simply  be  going  to  babble  the  orthodoxy  he  is 
paid  for. 

These  words,  I  doubt  not,  will  be  found  to  strike  a 
true  note  now.  If  a  man  would  have  any  success  with 
the  general  public  now-a-days,  almost  it  would  seem  as 
though,  very  commonly,  he  must  approve  himself,  on  the 
whole,  as  an  Aufgeklarter,  a  disciple  of  the  "  advanced  " 
thinking  we  all  understand  so  well.  That  is  the  temper 
of  the  time,  and  the  time — let  critics  say  as  scornfully  as 
they  like,  "  whatever  that  may  mean  " — the  time  has  a 
a  temper ;  and,  suppose  it  even  in  the  wrong,  it  is  as 
much  in  vain  to  move  against  it  as  for  Mrs.  Partington 
to  stave  out  the  Atlantic  with  her  besom.  The  reason, 
of  course,  is  that  the  Aufklarung, — call  it  if  you  will 
Secularism,  Agnosticism,  or  even  Eationalism, — the  reason 
is  that  the  Aufklarung  which,  to  our  greatest  thinkers, 
was  old  and  worn-out,  and  had  completely  done  its  task, 
by  the  beginning  of  this  century  has  descended  upon  the 
generality. 

In  our  large  towns  in  these  days,  in  our  capitals,  in 
our  villages,  we  are  confronted  by  a  vast  mass  of  un- 
belief. The  Aufklarung,  the  historical  movement  called 
Aufklarung,  as  I  sav,  dead  among  thinkers,  has  descended 
upon  the  people  ;  and  there  is  hardly  a  hamlet  but  has 
its  Tom  Faines  by  the  half-dozen — its  Tom  Paines  of  the 
tap,  all  emulously  funny  on  the  one  subject.  I  witnessed 
such  a  thing  as   this  myself  last  summer  in  the  country 


1G  G1FF0RD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

— the  bewildered  defeat  of  my  landlady  under  the  crow- 
ing triumph  of  her  son,  a  lad  of  seventeen  or  so,  who  had 
asked  her  to  explain  to  him  where  Cain  got  his  wife ! 
In  such  circumstances  we  cannot  expect  to  find  a  large 
portion  of  the  Press  different.  I  recollect  I  was  once 
warned  by  a  publisher,  that  I  must  remember  it  was  the 
No-God  men  who  had  the  pull  at  present.  One  is  glad 
to  think,  however,  that  in  this  the  dawn  of  a  change 
begins  to  show.  There  are  those  among  our  highest, 
best,  and  most  influential  organs  that  have  ceased  to 
think  that  it  is  any  longer  necessary  only  to  follow. 
They  will  teach  now,  inform,  instruct,  educate,  lead. 
Still,  on  the  whole,  we  may  lay  our  account  with  this, 
that  there  is  a  prejudice  in  the  mass  for  what  appears, 
at  least,  to  come  to  it  as  new.  These  are  the  words  of 
the  advanced,  it  thinks,  of  those,  as  I  have  said,  who  have 
been  fighting  the  battle  of  time,  in  which,  of  course,  it  is 
always  the  new  is  the  true.  I  am  sorry  for  this.  It  is 
only  a  radical  mistake  of  what  is  the  new  and  what  is 
the  true.  "  Distinguished  Paine,  rebellious  staymaker, 
rebellious  needleman,"  as  Carlyle  calls  him,  cannot  at 
least  be  new  in  these  days,  seeing  that  it  is  now  about  a 
hundred  years  since,  by  his  chalked  door  on  the  wrong 
side,  he  just  escaped  the  very  last  tumbrils  of  the  French 
Revolution.  I  suppose  deep  with  Paine  was  but  shallow 
at  its  best  :  it  is  not  likely  that  the  shallowness  of  a 
hundred  years  ago  is  less  shallow  now. 

That,  however,  is  the  other  danger.  If  there  was  a 
danger  that  reason  might  be  confounded  with  the  under- 
standing, and  philosophical  faith  with  Piationalism,  there 
is  also  a  danger  that  said  philosophical  faith,  just  in  this 
that  it  is  faith,  should,  by  the  followers  of  what  they 
consider  the  new,  not  be  listened  to.  It  is  to  be  sus- 
pected, indeed,  that  many  good  men,  who  know  quite 
well  what  and  where  the  Aufklarung  is,  are  now-a-days 


THE  PREJUDICE  AGAINST  BELIEF.  1  7 

reduced  to  silence  precisely  by  such  a  consideration. 
"Why  speak  if  no  one  will  listen  ?  Nothing  succeeds 
like  success,  and  a  failure  remains  a  failure.  Human 
nature  is  but  weak  ;  and  it  cannot  be  wondered  at,  that 
it  very  soon  gets  hoarse  in  the  throat,  if  it  finds  itself 
to  be  bawling  only  in  a  desert.  It  takes  patience  and 
a  long  life  for  men  like  the  Carlyles  and  the  Brownings 
to  be  overwhelmed  with  plaudits  in  the  end  that  can 
only  spoil  themselves. 

What  I  mean  by  all  this,  however,  is  only  to  protest 
against  such  religious  views  as  I  have,  not  expounded, 
but  indicated,  being  regarded  as  something  too  old  to  be 
listened  to.  I,  for  my  part,  very  stupidly,  perhaps,  but 
still,  as  even  the  adversary  will  hasten  to  allow,  not 
unnaturally,  am  apt  to  look  upon  them  as  the  very 
newest  of  the  new,  as  precisely  the  message  which  the 
votaries  of  philosophy  have  to  give  the  world  at  present. 

And  so  it  is  that,  to  my  mind,  such  votaries  of  philo- 
sophy must  not  allow  themselves  to  be  browbeat  by 
the  vulgarity  that  cries,  and  can  only  cry,  as  Cervantes 
tells  us,  "  Long  live  the  conqueror,"  meaning,  of  course, 
by  that,  only  the  side  that  is  uppermost  for  the  moment. 
What  is  really  out  of  date,  what  is  really  behind  the 
time,  is  to  insist  on  regarding  as  still  alive  an  interest 
that,  as  is  historically  known,  had,  so  far  as  the  progress 
of  thought  is  concerned,  fully  come  to  term  a  hundred 
years  ago.  Not,  at  the  same  time,  that  there  is  any  call 
for  us  to  be  either  narrow  or  intolerant.  What  is  in 
place  now  is  a  large  and  wise  liberality  that  shall  not 
fail  at  any  time  in  the  wish  and  the  will  to  face  and 
admit  the  truth.  If  any  man  confessed  to  me,  for 
example,  that,  when  the  walls  of  the  city  were  said  to 
have  fallen  at  the  blast  of  the  trumpet,  his  own  belief 
was  that  this  was  merely  the  Oriental  phantasy  express- 
ing in  a  trope  the  signal  speed  of  the  event — if  any  man 

B 


18  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

confessed  such  attitude  of  mind  tome  with  fears  for  his 

orthodox  security,  I  do  think  that  I  should  not  feel 
justified  in  bidding-  him  despair !  In  fact,  our  relative 
riches  aie  such  that,  to  my  belief,  we  may  readily  allow 
ourselves  as  much.  For  the  sake  of  comparison,  let  us 
even  do  this — let  us  consent,  so  far,  and  for  this  purpose, 
to  place  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hebrews  on  the  same 
level  as  the  other  sacred  books  of  the  East,  and  what 
have  we  lost  ?  Will  they  lose  in  the  regard  ?  Is  it  not 
amusing  at  times  to  note  the  exultation  with  which  our 
great  Cochinese  and  Anamese  scholars,  our  great  Tonquin 
explorers,  will  hold  up  some  mere  halting  verse  or  two, 
or  say  some  bill  of  sale,  certificate  of  feu,  against  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures.  Suppose  the  state  of  the  case  re- 
versed. Suppose  we  had  been  rejoicing  all  this  time  in 
these  bills  of  sale,  certificates  of  feu,  and  halting  verses — 
nay,  give  them  all,  give  them  their  own  best,  suppose  we 
had  been  rejoicing  all  this  time  in  the  Confucian  Kings 
and  the  very  oldest  Vedas,  and  suppose,  in  the  face  of 
all  these  possessions,  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  unknown 
before,  were  suddenly  dug  up  and  brought  to  light ! 
Then,  surely,  there  might  be  a  cry,  and  a  simultaneous 
shout,  that  never  before  had  there  been  such  a  glorious — 
never  before  had  there  been  such  a  miraculous  find  ! 
The  sacred  writings  of  the  Hebrews,  indeed,  are  .so  im- 
measurably superior  to  those  of  every  other  name  that, 
for  the  sake  of  the  latter,  to  invite  a  comparison  is  to 
undergo  instantaneous  extinction.  Nay,  regard  these 
Scriptures  as  a  literature  only,  the  literature  of  the  Jews 
— even  then,  in  the  kind  of  quality,  is  there  any 
literature  to  be  compared  with  it  ?  will  it  not  even  then 
remain  still  as  the  sacred  literature  ?  A  taking  simple- 
ness,  a  simple  takingness  that  is  divine — all  that  can 
lift  us  out  of  our  own  week-day  selves  and  place  us,  pure 
then,    holy,  rapt,  in  the  joy  and  the  peace  of  Sabbath 


HISTORICAL  ANACHRONISM.  19 

feeling  and  Sabbath  vision,  is  to  be  found  in  the  mere 
nature  of  these  old  idylls,  in  the  full-filling  Bublimity 
of  these  psalms,  in  the  inspired  Godwards  of  these 
intense-souled  prophets.  With  all  that  in  mind,  think 
now  of  the  tumid  superiority  of  Mr.  Buckle  !  If  any  one 
can  contradict  me,  he  magnanimously  intimates  when 
perorating  against  all  that,  "  I  will  abandon  the  view  for 
which  I  am  contending  ! "  With  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
lying  there  before  us  in  their  truth,  as  I  have  attempted 
to  image  it,  is  it  not  something  pitiably  small  to  hear 
again  the  jokes  even  of  a  Voltaire  about  the  discrepancies? 
I  do  not  apprehend  that  it  is  pretended  by  any  one  that 
there  are  not  discrepancies;  but  what  are  they  in  the 
midst  of  all  that  grandeur  ?  He,  now,  who  would  boggle 
at  the  wife  of  Cain,  or  stumble  over  the  walls  of  Jericho, 
is  not  an  adult :  lie  is  but  a  boy  still.  For  my  part,  I 
do  believe — I  feel  sure — that  David  Hume,  that  Voltaire 
himself  were  he  alive  now,  and  were  he  cognizant  of  all 
the  education  that  we  have  received  since,  even  on 
prompting  of  his  own,  would  not  for  a  moment  be  inclined 
to  own  as  his  these  laggards  and  stragglers  of  an  army 
that  had  disappeared.  He  would  know  that  the  new- 
time  had  brought  a  new  task,  and  he  would  have  no 
desire  to  find  himself  a  mere  anachronism,  and  historically 
out  of  .date. 

But  with  whatever  general  spirit  we  may  approach 
the  subject,  it  is  to  be  considered  that  that  subject,  that 
Natural  Theology  itself,  makes  no  call  on  Revelation — 
nay,  that  the  Lecturer  is  under  an  express  stipulation 
to  treat  it  in  independence  of  Revelation.  Natural 
Theology,  indeed,  just  as  Natural  Theology,  means  an 
appeal  to  nature,  an  appeal  that  is  only  natural.  In  it 
the  existence  of  a  God  is  to  be  established  only  by 
reference  to  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  even  as  thai 
universe  exhibits   itself  within  the   bounds  of  space  and 


20  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIRST. 

time ;  and  not  in   anywise  farther  than  as  it  is  reflected 
also  in  the  intellect  and  will  of  man. 

Having  thus  exhausted  what  appeared  necessary  pre- 
liminaries of  the  subject  so  far  as  the  respective  persons 
seem  concerned,  their  claims,  wishes,  intentions,  views, 
powers,  and  understandings  in  its  regard,  we  shall,  in  the 
next  lecture,  proceed  to  what  more  directly  bears  on  the 
subject  itself. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

Natural  theology,  what  is  it? — Usual  answers — Hutcheson — Varro 
— The  Middle  Ages— Kaymund  of  Sebonde — Rays,  Paleys,  etc. 
— Till  1860— Since— Philosophies  of  religion— Pagan  gods— De 
Quincey,  Augustine,  Cicero,  Pliny,  Juvenal,  Herodotus,  Aulus 
Gellius — The  proofs  historically  treated — That  the  theme — 
Plotinus,  Augustine— Natural  theology  not  possibly  a  physical 
science  —  Understanding  and  faith,  Augustine,  Anselm — 
Monotheism  alone  religion  proper — The  course,  affirmative, 
negative  —  China,  India,  Colebrooke,  Riis  bihiiri  Mukharji — 
Hindu  texts  (Gnostics) — Hesiod. 

Having  discussed  and  settled,  so  far  as  seemed  desir- 
able, the  personal  aspects  in  connection  with  the  matter 
in  hand — what,  viz.,  may  have  been  the  wishes,  inten- 
tions, and  general  spirit  of  the  Testator  himself  in  the 
reference,  as  well  as  what  expectations  it  may  be  in 
place  to  form  in  regard  to  the  immediate  lecturer,  and 
the  mood  of  mind  in  which  he  avows  himself  to  enter 
upon  this  theme, — questions,  it  is  hoped,  all  viewed  with 
feelings  and  considerations  not  alien  from,  but  so  far 
in  harmony  with,  the  subject, — to  that  subject  itself 
it  only  now  remains  for  us  more  directly  to  turn. 

It — that  subject — is  formally  dictated  and  expressly 
prescribed  to  us  under  the  name  of  Natural  Theology. 
We  are  met  at  once,  in  the  first  place,  then,  by  the 
question,  What  is  it — what  is  Natural  Theology?  I  dare- 
say we  have  all  some  idea,  more  or  less  correspondent  to 
the  interest  itself,  of  what  Theology  is.  Theology,  by 
the  etymology  of  the  mere  expression,  is  the  logos  of 
God.     The  Greek  logos,  to  be  sure,  like  the  Latin  ratio, 


22  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

has  quite  an  infinitude  of  applications ;  but  the  applica- 
tion that  comes  pretty  well  at  once  to  the  surface  here, 
suggests,  as  in  some  degree  synonymous  with  itself,  such 
words  as  description,  narrative,  account,  report,  rationale, 
theory,  etc.  Geology  is  a  description,  narrative,  account, 
report,  rationale,  theory  of  all  that  concerns  the  earth 
in  itself  and  in  its  vicissitudes.  Zoology  is  such  an 
account  of  all  that  concerns  animals ;  and  astrology, 
supposing  it  to  mean,  as  it  ought,  all  that  astronomy 
means,  is  a  description,  narrative,  account,  report,  rationale, 
theory  of  all  the  objects  we  perceive  in  the  heavens, 
and  of  their  various  movements  and  general  phenomena. 
Theology,  then,  is  to  expound  to  us  God,  the  fact  of  His 
existence,  and  the  nature  of  His  Being.  Now,  the 
qualifying  word,  Natural,  when  applied  to  Theology, 
must  have  a  limitative,  restrictive,  and  determinative 
force.  What  is  still  in  hand  is  Theology,  the  account 
of  God ;  but  that  account  is  to  be  a  natural  account. 
In  short,  Natural  Theology  means  that  we  are  to  tell 
of  God  all  that  we  can  tell  of  Him  via  natural,  by 
the  way  of  nature, — we  are  to  tell  of  Him  all  that  we 
can  tell  of  Him  from  an  examination  of  mere  nature — 
of  nature  as  we  perceive  or  find  it  to  be  without  us, 
of  nature  as  we  perceive  or  find  it  to  be  within  us. 
The  information  so  acquired  will  sometimes  be  found 
to  be  named,  as  by  the  Scholastics,  and  by  Descartes 
and  Leibnitz  after  them,  the  lumen  naturae,  lumen 
naturale,  lumidre  naturelle,  the  light  of  nature ;  and 
consequently,  by  very  name,  is  opposed  to  the  super- 
natural light  which  is  to  be  understood  as  given  us 
by  express  revelation. 

Francis  Hutcheson,  in  the  third  part,  Be  Deo,  of  his 
excellent  little  Latin  Synopsis  of  Metaphysics,  says  that 
"  although  all  philosophy  is  pleasant  and  profitable,  there 
is,  nevertheless,  no  part  of  it  more  productive  and  rich 


IIUTCHESON VAERO.  2  3 

than  that  which  contains  the  knowledge  of  God,  quceque 
dicitur  TJieologia  Katuralis."  This  Natural  Theology  he 
goes  on  to  describe  as  due  to  "  philosophers  who  support 
themselves  on  the  sole  powers  of  human  reason,  and  make 
no  reference  to  what  God  has  supernaturally  revealed  to 
inspired  men."  And  the  thing  itself  confirms  the  defini- 
tion. "We  have  only  to  look  to  what  treatises  have  been 
actually  written  on  the  subject  to  perceive  that  the 
attempt  in  all  of  them  is  to  demonstrate  the  existence 
and  attributes  of  the  Deity  by  reason  alone,  in  applica- 
tion to  nature  itself  as  it  appears  within  us  or  without 
us.  Any  sketch  of  the  history  of  these  treatises — of  the 
history  of  Natural  Theology — usually  begins  with  the 
mention  of  Yarro,  the  contemporary  of  Cicero,  a  man, 
as  it  appears,  of  eneyclopa-die  knowledge.  I  cannot  see, 
however,  much  in  his  connection  that  is  in  application 
here.  All  that  is  known  of  Yarro  on  this  head  is  to  be 
found  in  the  sixth  book  of  St.  Augustine's  City  of  God, 
the  greater  part  of  which  is  taken  up  with  Yarro  and 
his  relation  to  the  gods.  Augustine  praise-  Varro,  and 
says,  "  he  will  teach  the  student  of  things  as  much  as 
Cicero  delights  the  student  of  words."  There  shall  have 
been  on  his  part  also  "  a  threefold  division  of  theology 
into  fabulous,  natural,  civil."  And  here  Yarro  says 
himself,  "  they  call  that  kind  mythical  (or  fabulous) 
which  the  poets  chiefly  use ;  physical,  that  which  the 
philosophers  use ;  civil,  that  which  the  people  use ; " 
and  again  he  says,  "  the  first  theology  is  especially 
adapted  to  the  theatre,  the  second  to  the  world,  the 
third  to  the  city."  But  without  going  any  further  into 
this,  it  may  be  said  at  once  that  the  Natural,  rather 
Physical  Theology  here,  only  considered  the  principles 
of  the  philosophers,  as  the  fire  of  Heraclitus,  the 
numbers  of  the  Pythagoreans,  the  atoms  of  Epicurus  ; 
and    was    merely    a    rationalizing  of    what   was    alleged 


24  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

of  the  gods  into  these — these  principles,  and  had  no 
claim  whatever  to  the  title  Natural  Theology  as 
understood  by  us.  At  all  to  allude  to  Varro  in  this 
connection  is  on  the  whole  idle. 

Of  the  power  and  majesty,  as  well  as  of  the  love  of 
God,  exhibited  in  the  spectacle  of  the  creation,  we  know 
that  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  there  is  much  both 
of  awing  sublimity  and  heart-touching  gentleness.  And, 
accordingly,  we  may  as  readily  surmise  that  such  marvels 
of  poetry  and  inspiration  would  not  escape  the  early 
Fathers,  but  would  be  rapturously  used  by  them.  And 
so  indeed  it  was.  Not  but  that  there  was  a  religious 
teaching,  sooner  or  later,  in  vogue  also,  that  despised 
nature,  and  turned  from  it  as  something  inferior  or 
wicked.  All  through  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in  most 
of  their  respective  writings,  there  occur  traces  of  refer- 
ences to  nature  that  may  be  claimed  in  any  professed 
history  of  the  subject ;  but  in  point  of  reality  there  is  no 
veritable  "  Natural  Theology "  till  the  work  expressly 
so  named  by  the  Iiaimond  Sebond,  the  Iiaimondus  de 
Sebonde,  of  Montaigne.  The  place  he  is  named  from  is 
supposed  to  be  somewhere  in  Spain,  but  nobody  seems  to 
know  where  it  is  to  be  found ;  every  new  authority  has 
a  new  name  for  it,  Sebonde,  Sabunde,  Sabeyda,  Sabieude, 
etc. 

Eaymund  nourished  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  his  book  was  called  Tlieologia.  Naturalis  sive 
Liber  Creaturarum  ex  quo  homo  in  Dei  et  creaturarum 
suique  ipsius  cognitioncm  assurgit — Natural  Theology  or 
Book  of  the  Creatures,  from  which  a  man  rises  to  a 
knowledge  of  God  and  the  creatures  and  his  own  self. 
This  is  sufficiently  promising ;  but,  after  all,  there  is  not 
a  great  deal  in  the  book.  Nevertheless,  it  appeared  of 
such  importance  to  the  Eoman  Curia  that  we  find  its 
Prologus  in  the  list  of  forbidden  books;  this   in   1595, 


BAYMUND KAYS,  PALEYS,  ETC.  25 

more  than  a  century  and  a  half  after  its  presumed 
composition.  Montaigne,  too,  who  translated  it  into 
French  for  his  father,  speaks  in  the  highest  terms  of 
it,  "  Many  folks  amuse  themselves  reading  it,"  he  says, 
"  and  especially  the  ladies."  I  had  noted  some  pas- 
sages to  quote,  but  they  are  hardly  worth  the  time. 
In  the  ascent  of  things  to  God,  man  is  on  the  fourth 
grade,  he  remarks  :  he  is,  he  lives,  he  feels,  and  he  under- 
stands. This  is  a  fourfold  distinction  taken  from  Aris- 
totle, which  we  find  in  most  writers  throughout  the 
Middle  Ages ;  it  is  the  esse,  vivere,  sentirc,  intettigere,  so 
universally  applied  in  exposition  of  the  stages  of  creation 
during  the  Hexaemeron — the  six  days  of  it, 

After  liaymund,  or  his  commentator  Montaigne,  I 
fancy  we  need  hardly  mention  any  other  writers  on  the 
subject  till  we  come  to  the  Grews,  Rays,  Cudworths, 
Stillingfleets,  Derhams,  Clarkes,  and  Fenelons  nearer  our 
own  times  ;  in  which  (times)  all  previous  authorities 
have  been  superseded  by  our  Paley  and  our  Bridge- 
water  Treatises. 

These  last,  then, — this  now  is  the  important  considera- 
tion, and  here  is  the  critical  pause, — these  last,  then, 
represent  Natural  Theology,  and,  as  a  whole,  exhibit  it — 
is  it  their  contents  that  shall  constitute  the  burden  of 
these  lectures,  and  be  reproduced  now  ?  It  is  Natural 
Theology  we  have  to  treat — Paley  is  Natural  Theology. 
Shall  we  just  give  Paley  over  again  ?  I  fear  the  ques- 
tion will  be  met  by  most  of  us  with  a  shudder.  For 
many  years  back  it  would  seem  as  though  the  Natural 
Theology  of  the  Eays  and  the  Derhams,  of  the  Faleys 
and  the  Bridgcivatcr  Treatises  had  vanished  from  our 
midst.  "Where,"  asked  a  metaphysician  some  four- 
score years  ago, — "  where  may  or  can  now  a  single  note 
of  former  Natural  Theology  be  heard — all  that  has  been 
destroyed    root  and   branch,  and  has  disappeared  from 


26  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

the  circle  of  the  sciences  ?  "  His  own  question,  all  the 
same,  did  not  hinder  the  same  metaphysician  from 
lecturing  affirmatively  on  Natural  Theology  a  considerable 
number  of  years  later  ;  while,  at  about  the  same  time  in 
England,  there  was  a  revival  of  interest  in  the  subject, 
principally  in  consequence,  perhaps,  of  a  new  edition 
of  Paley's  work,  to  which  Sir  Charles  Bell  and  Lord 
Brougham  had,  each  in  his  own  way,  contributed. 
From  that  time,  quite  on  indeed  till  1860,  we  may 
say,  there  was  the  old  interest,  the  old  curiosity,  ad- 
miration, reverence,  awe,  as  in  presence  of  the  handi- 
work of  God,  when  the  descriptions  of  Natural  Theology 
were  before  us,  whether  in  lecture  or  in  book.  But 
now,  again,  a  new  wave  has  come  and  washed,  for  some 
twenty  years  back,  Natural  Theology  pretty  well  out 
of  sight.  He  who  should  take  it  up  now  as  Paley  took 
it  up,  or  as  Lord  Brougham  took  it  up,  would  simply  be 
regarded  as  a  fossil. 

In  such  circumstances  the  resource  seems  to  be  to 
turn  to  what  is  called  the  Philosophy  of  Religion,  and 
has  been  introduced  into  Great  Britain  almost  quite 
recently  in  the  form  of  one  or  two  translations  from 
the  German.  There  are  other  philosophies  of  religion 
in  existence  besides  any  as  yet  translated.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  there  is  no  department  of  philosophy,  so  far  as 
publishers'  lists  are  in  evidence,  which  claims  a  greater 
number  of  books  at  present.  Even  here,  however,  with 
a  special  view  to  the  requirements  of  Lord  Giford's 
Bequest,  I  do  not  find  my  look  of  inquiry  quite  hope- 
fully met.  In  one  of  the  translated  books,  for  example, 
what  we  find  as  a  philosophy  of  religion  is  pretty  well  a 
series  of  biographies ;  while,  in  the  other,  there  are  two 
parts — a  part  that  is  general,  and  a  part  that  is  bio- 
graphical. Now,  I  do  not  apprehend  that  a  mere  series 
of  biographies    would    suit    the   requirement  which  we 


PHILOSOPHIES  OF  ItELIGION*.  27 

have  in  view ;  and,  as  for  the  general  part,  it  does 
not  seem  to  satisfy  me  in  that  consideration  either. 
That  part  may  be  said  to  consist  of  three  divisions — 
one  division  being  given  to  what  we  may  call  alien 
religions,  another  to  our  own  Christianity,  and  a  third 
to  what  may  be  regarded  as  specially  general.  Now, 
as  regards  Christianity,  I  do  not  feel  that  I  should  be 
happy  did  I  philosophize  it  to  you,  even  if  that  were 
competent  to  us  on  Lord  Clifford's  foundation,  in  the 
way  in  which  it  has  been  usual  to  do  so,  as,  in  fact, 
we  find  at  once  in  the  example  readiest  to  hand — 
I  mean  in  the  Eaymund  of  Sabunde  we  have  just  spoken 
of.  This  writer  holds  that  there  must,  of  necessity,  be  a 
plurality  of  persons  in  the  Godhead,  quia  in  Deo  debet 
esse  communication  quaz  ncquit  esse  sine  dantc,  ct  recipiente 
atque  communicantc  (that  is,  "  because  in  God  there  must 
be  communication  or  community,  which,  again,  is  im- 
possible unless  there  be  a  Giver,  a  Receiver,  and  a 
Communicator ").  Of  course,  as  is  obvious  at  once, 
Eaymund  means  that  the  Father  should  be  the  Giver, 
the  Son  the  Receiver,  and  the  Third  Person  in  the 
Godhead  the  Communicator.  I  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  it  is  literally  thus  our  modern  writers  philoso- 
phize to  us  the  Trinity ;  but  it  is  an  example  in 
point,  and  perfectly  illustrates  the  general  method 
actually  in  use.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  popularly 
known ;  it  is  quite  true,  nevertheless,  that  in  the 
greater  number  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  and 
the  other  ecclesiastical,  especially  mystical,  writers  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  some  such  method  of  philosophizing  tin1 
persons  of  the  Godhead  is  commonly  to  be  found.  In 
them,  for  example,  as  in  more  modern  philosophical 
writers,  it  is  quite  usual  for  Christ  to  stand  as  the  ex- 
istent world.  Now,  I  am  not  at  all  a  foe  to  a  warrant  ml 
religious  philosophizing;  I  am  not  at  all  a  foe  even  to 


28  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

the  carrying  of  trinity — trinity  in  unity — into  the  very 
heart  of  the  universe  in  constitution  of  it.  But  it  strikes 
me  that  in  these  days,  and  as  we  are  here  in  Great 
Britain,  so  to  attempt  to  philosophize  the  Christian  God- 
head would  only  repugn.  I,  for  my  part,  cannot  feel  at 
home  in  it.  I  feel  quite  outside  of  it.  There  is  such  a 
naked  naivete  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  there  is  such  a 
direct  trust  of  natural  simplicity  in  the  New,  as  comport 
but  ill  with  the  apparent  artifice  and  mere  ingenuity  of 
these  seeming  externalities.  Again,  as  regards  the  divi- 
sion which,  in  these  books,  is  devoted  to  other  religions 
than  our  own,  one  finds  it  hard  to  put  faith  in  that 
adjustment  of  them,  the  one  to  the  other,  that  would 
make  a  correlated  series  of  them,  and  a  connected  whole. 
With  whatever  attempt  to  philosophize  them,  there 
appears  little  for  us  that  is  vital  in  these  religions  now. 
They  are  not  lively  these  nondescript  divinities.  My 
reading  of  these  parts  of  these  philosophies  has  been 
careful  enough  ;  but  I  always  found  that  a  Gesindel 
(a  rabble)  of  gods  would  not  prove  to  me,  as  a  Gesindel 
of  ghosts  had  proved  to  a  German  professor,  entertaining, 
that  is,  and  refreshing.  My  experience  rather  seemed 
to  be  something  like  that  of  De  Quincey  in  his  dreams. 
"  I  fled  from  the  wrath  of  Brahma ;  Vishnu  hated  me ; 
Siva  lay  in  wait  for  me ;  I  came  suddenly  on  Isis  and 
Osiris.  I  had  done  a  deed,  they  said,  which  the  ibis  and 
the  crocodile  trembled  at."  Milton's  "  Lars  and  Lemures," 
and  "  wounded  Thammuz,"  and  "  the  dog  Anubis,"  and 
"  that  twice-battered  god  of  Palestine,"  were  only  delight- 
ful to  me  in  his  own  most  glorious  poem.  Apart  from 
it,  I  was  as  grimly  content  to  see  them  turn  tail  and  flee 
as  he  was.  I  quite  sympathized  with  Augustine  in  his 
contempt  or  horror  of  such  gods  as  Jugatinus  and  Domi- 
ducus,  and  Domitius  and  Manturna,  and  Subigus  and 
Prema  and  Pertunda.      I  agreed  with  Cicero  that  it  was 


PAGAN  GODS.  29 

"  detestable,"  that  it  was  to  be  "  repudiated,"  and  not  to 
be  "  tolerated,"  that  there  should  be  such  gods  as  Fever 
and  Mischance,  Insolence  and  Impudence.  I  did  not 
wonder  at  Pliny's  disgust  with  the  human  folly  that  would 
believe  in  such  gods.  And  did  not  Juvenal  tell  us  of 
the  Leek  and  the  Onion  as  the  gods  whom,  inviolably, 
the  Egyptians  swore  by  ?  "Oh,  the  holy  nation,"  exclaims 
Juvenal, — "  oh,  the  holy  nation  whose  very  gods  grow  in 
their  gardens  ! "  One  remembers,  nevertheless,  that  in 
the  erection  of  the  pyramids,  according  to  Herodotus, 
these  same  Egyptians  ate  up  ever  so  many  hundred 
talents'  worth  of  those  gods  of  theirs.  As  for  the 
divinity  of  the  onion  in  particular,  Aulus  Gellius  informs 
us  that  the  Egyptian  priests  believed  it,  because  the 
onion  reversed  for  them  the  usual  order  of  sublunary 
things,  growing,  namely,  as  the  moon  declined,  and  de- 
clining as  the  moon  grew.  I  am  not  aware  that  modern 
science  has  confirmed  the  supposition ;  but,  no  doubt, 
they  knew  a  great  many  more  things  then  than  we  know 
now !  A  Gesindel,  a  canaille,  a  rabble  of  gods  truly  ! 
And  Pliny  has  it  that  there  was,  in  his  time  even,  a 
greater  population  of  gods  and  goddesses  than  of  human 
beings !  The  Greek  poets  and  the  Eoman  poets — I  am 
just  recounting  my  relative  experiences  here — were  all 
as  pleasing  to  me,  no  doubt,  as  to  another ;  but  I 
could  not  say  that  the  special  gods,  Jupiter  and  the  rest, 
made  any  very  appreciable  part  of  the  pleasure.  I  had 
no  interest  in  the  gods  of  polytheism  at  all :  after  strange 
gods  I  suppose  it  formed  no  part  of  my  idiosyncrasy  to 
run.  In  short,  in  the  division  under  reference  of  the 
said  philosophies  of  religion,  the  philosophizing  of  the 
various  gods  of  the  various  nations  failed  to  move  me  or 
inspire  me  with  a  will  to  follow  in  the  same  direction. 
This,  of  course,  cannot  be  without  some  natural  exaggera- 
tion ;  for,  in  the  end,  I  by  no  means  deny  a  certain  affinity 


30  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

of  the  religions,  the  one  to  the  other,  and  a  consequent 
possibility  of  philosophically  bringing  them  together.  I 
only  wish  that  for  the  purpose  of  use  the  actual  attempts 
in  this  direction,  so  far  as  possibility  of  presentation  is 
concerned,  were  better  suited  for  our  public.  But,  for 
the  mere  histories  of  the  various  popular  divinities,  I 
failed  to  see  that  I  could  make  any  application  of  them 
in  the  charge  I  had  accepted  in  connection  with  Lord 
Gifford's  bequest.  Natural  Theology  as  Natural  Theology 
I  could  not  in  any  way  find  in  them. 

But,  besides  the  divisions  philosophizing, — the  one 
Christianity  and  the  other  paganism, — there  was  the  inter- 
mediate division  of  a  more  general  philosophical  matter, 
discussing,  for  example,  the  question  of  the  seat  of  re- 
ligion, whether  it  was  a  sentiment,  or  whether  it  was  a 
knowledge — even  here  I  failed  to  find  myself  satisfied  as 
to  its  sufficient  availableness  in  respect  of  the  conditions 
in  view.  The  best  performances  in  this  regard  had  in 
them,  assuming  all  else  to  be  unobjectionable,  such  a 
mode  of  presentation  and  treatment  as  hardly  could  be 
acceptably  and  intelligibly  conveyed. 

Recurring  perforce  from  the  Philosophy  of  Tieligion  to 
Natural  Theology  again,  it  suggested  itself  that,  after  all, 
Paley 's  way  of  it  did  not  exhaust  the  subject.  The  field 
was  really  a  larger  field  than  Paley  occupied.  Paley 
entertained  no  questions  of  the  proofs  as  the  proofs,  and 
the  proofs  as  the  proofs  constituted  the  subject.  The 
arguments,  the  proofs  for  the  Being  of  a  God — that  was 
Natural  Theology.  And,  again,  not  less  are  these  proofs 
the  very  essential  elements  and  bases  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion  itself.  There  is  no  philosophy  of  religion 
that,  extricating  itself  from  mere  biography,  possesses  a 
general  part,  but  finds  room — the  best  of  them  large, 
important,  and  essential  room — for  the  subject  of  the 
proofs.     Whence  come  these  proofs,  then  ?     They  must 


THE  PROOFS  HISTORICALLY  TREATED.  ol 

have  had  a  beginning.  But  begin  where  they  might,  they 
could  have  had  no  place  where  paganism  and  polytheism 
obtained.  Side  by  side  with  religion,  there  might  have 
been  vague,  crude,  general  philosophizings,  but  there  could 
have  been  no  Natural  Theology  as  Natural  Theology,  and  no 
proofs  as  proofs  of  Natural  Theology.  Polytheism, therefore, 
must  fade,  monotheism  must  dawn,  before  there  could  be 
even  a  thought  of  Natural  Theology  or  its  proofs.  What, 
then,  is  the  history  of  these  proofs,  and  in  this  relation  ? 
Suppose,  at  long  and  last,  we  take  up  this, — suppose  we 
take  up  consideration  of  the  known,  received,  tabulated, 
traditional  proofs, and  in  connection  ivith  their  history, — that 
would  be  an  escape  at  once  from  what  is  alleged  to  be 
antiquated,  and  to  what  brings  with  it  an  element  that 
promises  to  be  new  ;  for  there  may  be  in  existence  sketched 
suggestions  in  regard  to  those  who  have  written  on  the 

DO  O 

subject ;  but  it  seems  unknown  that  any  attention  has 
been  paid  as  yet  to  the  historical  derivation  of  the  proofs 
themselves.  In  this  way,  too,  there  would  be  no  abandon- 
ment of  the  subject  itself.  Natural  Theology — God  as  the 
sole  content  of  Natural  Theology — would  never  fall  from 
sight  nor  cease  to  be  before  our  eyes.  Nor  yet  are  we 
any  more  in  this  way  excluded  from  philosophy :  we  are 
at  once  here  in  the  very  heart  of  the  philosophy  of  religion 
itself ;  and,  in  a  personal  regard,  there  can  be  no  want  of 
every  opportunity  to  say  everything  whatever  that  one 
may  have  a  wish  or  ability  to  say  on  such  theme  generally. 
With  four  men,  at  four  universities,  all  declaiming,  year 
after  year,  on  the  same  text,  there  may  come  necessity  for 
diversion  and  digression;  but  now,  in  this  firsl  year,  it 
would  ill  become  the  lecturer  who  was  first  elected  on  the 
whole  foundation,  and  in  the  university  at  least  of  the 
capital — it  would  ill  become  him,  so  signalized  and  so 
placed,  to  set  the  example  of  an  episode,  while  il  was  the 
epic  he  was  specially  engaged  for.      There  can  be  no  doubt 


32  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

that  Lord  Gifford  was  very  serious  in  his  bequest, — there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  the  one  meaning,  end,  aim,  intention, 
and  object  of  all  those  emphatic  specifications  and  desig- 
nations of  his, — there  can  be  no  question  but  that  the 
Testator's  one  wish,  in  these  days  of  religious  difficulty  and 
distrust,  was  for  some  positive  settlement  in  regard  to  the 
Being  of  a  God.  One  cannot  read  that  last  Will  and 
Testament  of  Lord  Gifford's,  indeed,  without  being  reminded 
of  what  Porphyry  tells  us  of  Plotinus.  Plotinus  died,  he 
says,  with  these  last  words  in  his  mouth :  Ileipdadco  to 
ev  fjfuv  6elov  dvdyeiv  7T/30?  to  ev  ra>  irdvTi  Oetov  (strive  to 
bring  the  God  that  is  in  us  to  the  God  that  is  in  the  All). 
Kepler,  apparently  in  contrast  to  this,  says  :  "  My  highest 
wish  is  to  find  within  the  God  whom  I  find  everywhere 
without."  In  such  a  matter,  however,  it  does  not  signify 
from  which  side  we  take  it.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  last  thoughts  of  Lord  Gifford  concerned  his  own  soul, 
and  the  God  who  made  it.  To  know  that,  was  to  Lord 
Gifford  to  know  all.  It  was  with  him  just  as  though  he 
soliloquized  with  St.  Augustine  (Soliloq.  i.  7) :  Deum  et 
unimam  scire  cupio  (I  desire  to  know  God  and  the  soul). 
Nihilne  plus  (Nothing  more)  ?  Nihil  omnino  (Nothing  at 
all)! 

It  is  true  at  the  same  time — and  it  may  be  well  for  a 
moment  to  meet  this  point — that  Lord  Gifford  wished  the 
subject  to  be  treated  as  a  strictly  natural  science,  just 
as  astronomy  or  chemistry  is.  But  natural  obviously  is 
only  opposed  here  to  supernatural,  only  to  what  concerns 
lievelation.  It  were  idle  to  ask  me  to  prove  this :  every 
relative  expression  is  a  proof  in  place.  If  it  were  said  that 
astronomy  is  to  be  treated  as  a  strictly  natural  science 
just  as  chemistry  is,  would  it  be  necessary  to  substitute 
in  the  former  the  method  of  the  latter — to  roast  Jupiter 
in  a  crucible,  or  distil  Saturn  over  in  a  retort  ?  Things 
that  are  identical  in  the  genus  are  very  unlike  in  the 


NATURAL  THEOLOGY  NOT  POSSIBLY  A  PHYSICAL  SCIENCE.    33 

species,  as  in  the  Aristotelian  example  of  the  ox  and  the 
man,  where  each  is  an  animal.  The  apparatus  of  chemistry 
is  for  chemistry,  and  the  apparatus  of  astronomy  is  for 
astronomy :  neither  can  be  substituted  for  the  other ;  and 
both  are  powerless  in  regard  to  the  object  of  Natural 
Theology.  Our  transatlantic  brothers,  as  wTe  hear  at  this 
moment,  are  going  to  have  object  glasses,  or  reflectors,  or 
refractors,  of  ever  so  many  feet ;  but  the  very  tallest 
American,  with  the  very  tallest  of  telescopes,  will  never 
be  able  to  say  that  he  spied  out  God.  Natural  Theology 
is  equally  known  as  Rational  Theology ;  and  Rational 
Theology  is  equally  known  as  the  Metaphysic  of  God. 
That  last  phrase  is  acceptable  enough ;  it  repugns  not ; 
but  fancy  the  Physic  of  God  !  The  Greek  term,  doubtless, 
has  an  identity  with  the  Latin  one  ;  but  it  has  also  a 
difference.  Natural  Theology  may  be  considered  a  strictly 
natural  science ;  but  it  were  hardly  possible  to  treat  it  as 
a  strictly  physical  science.  Physical  Theology  sounds 
barbarous,  and  carries  us  no  farther  than  Mumbo-Jumljo 
and  the  fetich  in  general. 

What  we  have  to  aim  at,  wholly  and  solely,  here,  in 
our  science,  is  the  knowledge  of  God,  a  knowledge  that  can 
come  to  us  only  metaphysically  ;  for  it  is  a  knowledge  that, 
with  whatever  reference  to  nature,  is  still  beyond  nature  ; 
— a  knowledge,  in  fact,  whose  very  business  in  the  end  is 
to  transcend  nature — the  knowledge,  namely,  to  which  the 
Finite  is  only  the  momentary  purchase  that  gives  the  rise 
to  the  Infinite.  It  can  come  to  us,  then,  as  said,  only 
metaphysically,  and  for  that  matter,  too,  only  religiously. 
The  old  way  of  it  is  not  without  its  truth,  the  old  way  of 
it,  as  in  the  time  of  Augustine,  or  as  in  the  time  of  Anselm. 
To  both  Augustine  and  Anselm  there  may  be  a  necessity 
for  a  cultivation  of  the  understanding ;  but  to  both  also 
there  is  a  necessity  that  faith  precede.  Augustine  {Civ. 
Dei,  ix.  20)  has  in  mind  the  verse  (1  Cor.  viii.  1),  "  Know- 

c 


34  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

ledge  puffeth  up,  but  charity  buildeth  up."  "  Aud  this 
can  only  be  understood,"  he  says,  "  as  meaning  that  with- 
out charity,  knowledge  does  no  good,  but  inflates  a  man, 
or  magnifies  him  with  an  empty  windiness."  So  it  is  that 
to  Augustine  faith,  love,  charity  must  precede  knowledge. 
Even  as  the  ground  must  be  loosened  and  softened  for 
reception  of  the  seed,  so  must  the  heart  be  made  tender 
by  faith,  charity,  and  love,  if  it  would  profitably  receive 
into  itself  the  elements  of  knowledge.  The  same  necessi- 
ties, to  the  same  end,  with  humility,  occur  in  Anselm. 
So  here  we  have  only  to  recollect  his  most  frequent 
expressions  to  know  that  the  general  object  of  Lord  Gifford, 
too,  was  faith,  belief — the  production  of  a  living  principle 
that,  giving  us  God  in  the  heart,  should,  in  this  world  of 
ours,  guide  us  in  peace. 

How  inapplicable  mere  Physics  are  to  Natural  Theology 
is  obvious  also  from  this,  that  Lord  Gifford  directly  styles 
the  latter  "  the  only  science,  the  science  of  Infinite  Being." 
It  is  not  in  a  science  of  Infinite  Being  that  the  lever  or 
the  pulley  or  the  screw  can  have  any  place ;  in  respect 
of  such  a  science,  there  is  no  power  to  deal  with  it  but 
what  lies  in  philosophy.     And  thus  in  meeting  an  objec- 
tion that  may  rest  on  such  expressions  as   astronomy, 
chemistry,  natural  science,  etc.,  we  are  brought  back  to 
where  we  were  in  connection  with  the  proofs  and  their 
appearance  in   history.      Natural  Theology  as    Natural 
Theology,  the  philosophy  of  Infinite  Being  as  the  philo- 
sophy of  Infinite  Being,  neither  the  one  nor  the  other 
can  be  found  in  Physics,  and  just  as  little  in  paganism 
or  in  polytheism ;  but  both  are  to  be  found,  and  found 
together,  when  on    the    stage    of  history  polytheism  is 
melting  into  monotheism,  and  paganism  is  drawing  nigh 
to  Christianity.     I  have  been  met  with  surprise  when   I 
have  said  that  religion  proper  only  begins  with  mono- 
theism.     But  you  will  realize  what  I  mean,  if  you  will 


MONOTHEISM  ALONE  RELIGION  PROPER.  35 

only  consider  the  idea  of  sin.  In  mere  mythology,  which 
is  superstition  only,  there  may  be  fear  for  an  evil  in  threat, 
or  hope  for  a  good  that  is  desired,  but  there  is  no  moral 
sense  of  sin,  no  moral  anguish  and  conflict  in  one's  own 
conscience.  Moral  responsibility  comes  only  with  the  doc- 
trine of  the  one  God  that  has  made  man  in  His  image. 
For  then  man  is  no  longer  a  slave  ;  he  is  a  free  man,  and 
is  referred  to  his  own  standard  as  a  rational  being,  in 
regard  to  whether  he  is  in  unison  with  his  Maker  or  not. 
Had  ever  any  Greek  or  Eoman  struggles  within  himself 
as  to  his  belief  or  unbelief  ?  Many  a  modern  has  given 
to  this  world  soul-thrilling  testimonies  of  struggles  as  to 
God;  but  never  a  Greek  or  a  Eoman  in  regard  to 
Jupiter  or  Juno.  Men,  of  course,  will  tear  you  like  wild 
beasts,  and  rend  you  into  a  thousand  fragments,  should 
you  spit  upon  their  fetiches,  in  whose  good  -  will  they 
trust ;  but  that  is  a  different  matter.  These  men  may 
hate  you  ;  but  they  have  no  struggles  in  themselves. 

And  now,  after  all  these  meetings  of  objections  and 
all  these  explanations,  in  which,  I  trust,  you  will  still 
kindly  acknowledge  a  certain  treatment  of  the  subject 
itself, — after  all  this,  it  remains  for  me  to  state  finally 
and  formally  what  our  further  course  shall  be  both  for 
this  session  and  the  next.  I  take  the  theme  as  it  is  pre- 
scribed to  me — Natural  Theology  and  the  proofs  for  the 
Being  of  a  God.  These  proofs  I  follow  historically,  while 
the  reflection,  at  the  same  time,  that  we  have  still  before 
us  "  the  only  science,  the  science  of  Infinite  Being,"  may 
bring  with  it  a  certain  breadth  and  filling,  tending  to 
preclude,  perhaps,  what  possible  insufficiency  of  philo- 
sophical matter  a  mere  consideration  of  the  proofs  them- 
selves might  chance  to  involve.  This  is  one  half  of  my 
enterprise.  The  other  half — the  negative  half — shall 
concern  the  denial  of  the  proofs.  This  session  I  confine 
myself  to  the  affirmative ;  next  session,  I  shall  conclude 


36  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

with  what  concerns  the  negative.  In  this  way  we  shall 
have  two  correspondent  and  complementary  halves — one 
irenical,  and  the  other  polemical ;  one  with  the  ancients, 
and  the  other  with  the  moderns.  For  I  shall  bring  the 
affirmative  half  historically  down  only  till  we  come  again 
in  sight  of  Eaymund  of  Sabunde,  with  whom  in  a  way 
our  explanations  opened.  I  shall  not  trouble  you  with 
any  formal  exposition  of  the  proofs  themselves  till  we 
come  to  the  negative  that  denies  them ;  and  I  do  not 
think  it  necessary  to  deduce  the  historical  part  farther 
than  Eaymund.  I  hold  the  Grews,  the  Kays,  the  Der- 
hams,  etc.,  to  have  been  all  absorbed  in  your  familiar 
Paley,  who,  for  his  part,  needs  no  exposition  of  mine. 

Now,  of  the  historical  reference  in  question,  I  know 
not  that  there  is  much  to  be  said  till  the  first  faint  rise 
of  monotheism  begins  to  show  itself  among  the  Greeks  ; 
for  I  shall  presume  the  writings  of  the  Hebrews  to  have 
stood  fairly  on  the  world-stage  only  after  Christianity 
came  to  the  struggle  with  heathenism ;  though  cer- 
tainly, some  250  years  before  the  commencement  of  our 
era,  the  Jews  had  attained,  in  Alexandria,  to  a  decided 
influence  on,  to  say  so,  the  universal  historical  life. 

Before  Greece,  and  in  regard  to  possible  philosophizings 
spoken  of  as  side  by  side  with  the  religions,  we  have  to 
cast  our  eyes  only  on  India ;  for,  as  regards  China,  there 
does  not  seem  anything  for  us  there,  unless  the  declara- 
tion of  the  sect  of  Lao-tse,  that  a  material  naturalism 
need  not  alone  be  the  object  of  knowledge  and  belief, 
but  that  the  superiority  lies  with  the  things  of  reason 
and  the  soul.  Henry  Thomas  Colebrooke,  in  his  essays 
on  the  philosophy  of  the  Hindus,  published  in  the  Trans- 
actions of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  and  reprinted  in  his 
Miscellaneous  Essays,  has  collected  for  us  all  that  bears 
on  the  philosophical  theology  of  India ;  for  what  is 
philosophical  in   that  reference   alone  concerns  us — wTe 


CHINA,  INDIA,  COLEBROOKE.  37 

have  no  call  to  turn  to  that  Gesindel  of  gods  them- 
selves. I  may  allow  myself  to  lament  to  you  that  I 
have  not  an  assistance  here,  which  I  had  at  least  much 
hoped  for.  I  have  in  correspondence  with  me  an  Indian 
gentleman  of  the  greatest  philosophical  promise,  who 
has  for  years  been  engaged  upon,  and  will  soon  publish,  a 
great  historical  work  in  reference  to  the  philosophy  and 
philosophies  of  the  Hindus — Mr.  Eas  Biharl  Mukharji. 
In  the  meantime,  while  we  wait,  we  must  be  glad  that 
we  have  Colebrooke.  Here  among  his  translations  is 
one  in  which  the  beginning  of  all  things  is  represented 
very  much  as  it  is  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis :  "  The 
earth  was  without  form  and  void ;  and  darkness  was 
upon  the  face  of  the  deep.  Then,  was  there  neither 
entity  nor  nonentity ;  no  world,  nor  sky,  nor  aught 
above  it  .  .  .  darkness  there  was  ...  but  That  breathed 
without  afflation — other  than  Him  nothing  existed  .  .  . 
this  universe  was  enveloped  with  darkness  .  .  .  but  that 
mass,  which  was  covered  by  the  husk,  was  at  length 
produced  by  the  power  of  contemplation  and  desire,  the 
original  productive  seed."  It  is  observed  in  a  note  to 
the  passage  in  Colebrooke  that  darkness  and  desire  here 
(Tamas  and  Kama)  bear  a  distinct  resemblance  to  the 
Chaos  and  Eros  of  Hesiod.  But  that  mighty  formless 
void,  as  it  were  the  nebula  of  a  world,  breathed  out  like 
an  exhalation  around  the  Supreme  Being,  who  then  was 
simply  contemplation  and  desire,  reminds  of  similar  ideas 
in  the  Gnostics,  who  also  were  mainly  Orientals.  Thus 
to  Valentinus  God  was  as  the  Bythos,  the  deeply-brooding 
abyss,  the  syzygy  of  which  was  evvoia,  meditation ;  and 
meditation  was  <riyi],  silence,  or  %«/3l<?>  bliss.  All  these 
ideas  seem  to  go  together ;  and,  as  Thomas  Taylor  might 
say,  are  not  paradigmatic  only,  but  parental.  They  are 
not  merely  schematic — merely  in  effigy  or  scheme,  but 
they  are  substantially  productive,  procreative,  parturient. 


38  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

Almost  we  get  the  thought  from  them  that  God  must 
be,  and  with  God  His  world.  There  is  the  fivdos,  the 
deep,  the  eternal  deep,  the  abysmal  deep— is  it  not 
very  striking  that  with  such  first  principle,  the  second 
should  be  evvota,  meditation  ?  And  that  meditation  is 
aiyij,  silence,  deep,  eternal,  infinite ;  and  that  silence  is 
Xapt?,  bliss,  the  mighty  secret,  the  deep,  silent,  mystic 
felicity  of  the  all-blessed  God  hidden  and  shut  up  into 
Himself.  One  cannot  think  of  that  first  of  things,  that 
unfathomable  profound,  all-silent  there,  all-blissful  there, 
— one  cannot  think  of  it  but  as  full — the  seon  world  is  its 
7r\i]pa>fjLa,  and  its  ir\r)p<o\ia,  its  filling,  is  the  universe  that 
is  to  be.  All  the  thoughts  go  together,  and  they  come  to 
us  as  but  the  necessary  nisus  of  the  mighty  prime,  the 
prime  that  is  itself  a  necessity  and  a  nisus.  The  Gnostics 
proceed  to  add  here,  perhaps,  a  discordant  note.  They 
call  this  j3v96<i,  app6vo-6r]\v<;,  man-woman ;  but  still  it  is 
not  incongruous  that  it  should  be  as  yet  the  all-one,  the 
all  -  indifferent,  the  all  -  neutral,  the  simple  infinite,  the 
aireipov  of  Anaximander.  Another  syzygy  of  the  Gnostics 
here  is  a\r)6eia  truth,  and  truth  also  is  in  place.  To  all 
mankind,  as  to  Democritus,  it  has  seemed  only  fit  that 
truth  should  be  hidden  in  a  well  {(ivOu). 

These  gnostic  ideas  are  evidently  very  much  in 
consonance  with  the  conceptions  of  the  Indians  in  regard 
to  their  Supreme  Being,  who  at  first  for  them  "  breathed 
without  affiation."  And  I  refer  to  such  ideas  now  not 
as  formally  illustrative  of  the  proofs  as  such,  but  as  being 
at  least  akin  to  them.  If  there  be  a  creating  God  as 
there  is  both  to  the  Indians  and  the  Gnostics,  then  what 
is  called  Teleology  is  irrepressible,  design  confronts  us  on 
the  spot.  But  however  it  be  with  Teleology,  with  the 
proofs,  how  much  such  a  passage  as  that  Indian  passage 
is  as  a  voice  from  what  to  Lord  Gifford  is  "  the  only 
science — the  science  of  Infinite  Being,"  must  of  itself  be 


HINDU  TEXTS — GNOSTICS.  39 

obvious  at  once.  As  might  be  expected  too,  it  is  not  ;i 
passage  left  to  Colebrooke  alone ;  it  is  to  be  found  in  all 
writers  of  the  class,  as,  prominently,  in  the  texts  and 
translations  of  that  eminent  Orientalist  Dr.  John  Muir. 
In  his  History  of  Ancient  Sanscrit  Literature,  at  page 
.r>4G,  there  is  also  an  admirable  poetical  rendering  of  it  at 
the  able  hands  of  Mr.  Max  Miiller,  who,  as  we  all  know, 
is  not  only  a  passed  master  in  linguistic  science,  but  in 
comparative  mythology  as  well  the  chief  authority. 

Further,  here,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place,  indeed,  that 
I  should  name  a  few  more  of  these  Indian  assonances. 
This,  for  example,  is  very  notable :  "  Looking  around, 
that  primeval  being  saw  nothing  but  himself,  and  he 
first  said, '  I  am  I.'  Therefore  his  name  was  'I.'"  Here, 
too,  is  a  remarkable  passage :  "  Brighu  approached  his 
father,  Varuna,  saying,  '  Venerable  !  make  known  to  me 
Brahma ; ' "  and  on  the  third  asking,  it  is  said,  "  He 
(Varuna)  meditated  in  deep  contemplation,  and  dis- 
covered intellect  to  be  Brahma ;  for  all  these  beings  are 
indeed  produced  from  intellect ;  when  born  they  live  by 
intellect ;  towards  intellect  they  tend  ;  and  they  pass 
into  intellect."  Anaxagoras  on  the  vovs  could  hardly 
have  been  better  abbreviated.  The  declarations  of 
Hindu  philosophy  in  regard  to  causality  may  be  referred 
to  as  having  a  relation  as  well  to  Teleology  as  to  Ontology, 
or  the  Science  of  Being.  But  for  them  we  shall  have  a 
fitter  place  elsewhere.  Continuing  our  illustrations  from 
Colebrooke,  here  is  another  proposition  which  I  think  we 
shall  yet  find  of  the  greatest  relevance  and  reach  in 
what  constitutes  for  us  our  special  interest :  "  There 
must  be  one  to  enjoy  what  is  formed  for  enjoyment :  a 
spectator,  a  witness  of  it ;  that  spectator  is  soul."  There 
is  also  to  be  found,  similarly,  in  these  communications 
this  remarkable  statement  in  regard  to  the  final  cause  of 
the  world,  or  rather  simply  of  nature,  nature  as  such. 


40  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SECOND. 

It  (nature)  is  not  there  independently,  self-subsistently, 
and  on  its  own  account ;  it  is  there  only  for  a  purpose 
and  as  a  means.  "As  a  dancer,"  it  is  said,  "having 
exhibited  herself  to  the  spectator,  desists ;  so  does 
nature  desist,  having  manifested  herself  to  soul.  .  .  . 
He  (the  spectator)  desists  because  he  has  seen  her ;  and 
she  (the  dancer)  desists  because  she  has  been  seen." 
That  is,  the  work  has  been  accomplished ;  what  was  to 
be  done  has  been  done ;  and  the  implements  withdraw. 

As  regards  the  reference  on  the  part  of  Colebrooke  to 
the  Thcogony  of  Hesiod  and  certain  resemblances  in  its 
traditions  to  those  of  the  Indians,  there  cannot  be  a 
doubt  of  its  correctness.  Both  ring  with  assonances  to 
the  cosmogony  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and  it  is  impossible 
to  avoid  believing,  in  reference  to  all  three,  that  they 
echo  to  us  some  of  the  most  ancient  utterances  of  the 
race.  Mr.  Paley,  the  learned  editor  of  Hesiod,  observes 
in  his  preface  (xv.)  that  in  the  Thcogony  we  have  "  traces 
of  what  appear  to  be  primitive  and  nearly  universal 
traditions  of  the  human  family  .  .  .  traditions  so 
immensely  ancient,  that  all  traces  of  anything  like  a 
history  of  them  had,  long  before  Hesiod's  time,  been 
utterly  and  irretrievably  lost.  The  coincidences  between 
the  earliest  known  traditions  of  mankind  and  the  Mosaic 
writings  are  much  too  numerous  and  important  to  be  purely 
accidental,  and  much  too  widely  dispersed  to  have  been 
borrowed  solely  from  that  source."  So  writes  Mr.  Paley. 
The  traditions  in  Hesiod,  therefore,  in  regard  to  primitive 
being,  infinite  and  divine,  are  in  nowise  discordant  from 
those  of  the  East.  We  shall  allow  Hesiod,  accordingly,  to 
be,  so  far,  the  bridge  from  the  East  to  the  West,  from  the 
Indian  to  the  Greek,  where  and  among  whom  we  shall 
find  at  last  the  scientific  beginning,  historically,  as  well 
of  Teleology  as  of  Ontology,  with  all  the  ethical  and  other 
consequences  desiderated  by  Lord  Gifford. 


GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  THIKD. 

Final  causes— The  four  Aristotelian  causes— Are  there  final  causes 
in  nature— Matter  and  form — Other  causes  only  to  realize  tin- 
final  causes — Cudworth— Adam  Smith — The  proofs,  number, 
order,  etc. — Teleology — Anaxagoras — Socrates  in  the  Phsedo — 
Xenophon —  Plato  —  Socrates  on  Anaxagoras  —  The  causes 
together,  concrete  —  "Abstract"  —  Forces,  Clerk  Maxwell  — 
Heraclitus— Newton  — Buckle  —  Descartes  —  Gassendi  —  Bar.  ,n 
on  causes,  metaphysics,  and  forms — The  vol>;  (nous)  of  Anaxa- 
goras— Bacon  on  design — Reid,  Newton,  Hume  on  design — 
Newton. 

Fearing  that  we  should  find  the  present  lecture  dull,  I 
have  been  at  considerable  pains  this  week  in  the  re- 
writing of  it ;  for  I  desire  to  be  at  least  intelligible,  if 
not  interesting  or  popular.  My  reason  for  fear  was  thai 
I  had  been  led  to  speak  at  some  length  of  final  causes, 
and  the  subject  appeared  a  somewhat  dry  one.  Still,  lei 
it  be  as  it  may,  it  is  one  that  in  such  a  course  as  this  is 
unavoidable.  For  the  very  existence  of  our  science,  the 
very  existence  of  Natural  Theology,  is  bound  up  with  the 
existence  of  final  causes.  Destroy  final  causes  once  for 
all,  and  you  destroy  Natural  Theology  for  ever. 

The  origin  of  the  term,  as  is  well  known,  lies  in  the 
Aristotelian  quadruplicity  of  causes  as  such  ;  final  causes 
being  but  one  of  its  members.  We  are  told  in  our  class- 
rooms, namely,  of  material  causes,  formal  causes,  final 
causes,  and  efficient  causes ;  and  the  usual  example  given 
is  that  of  a  watch,  in  regard  to  which,  the  metals  are  the 
material  causes ;  the  wheels,  pinions,  cylinders,  etc.,  the- 
formal  causes ;  the  watchmaker,  the  efficient  cause ;  and 


42  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

the  pointing  of  the  hour,  the  final  cause.  Warmth  is  the 
final  cause  of  a  blanket ;  but  so  much  sheep's  wool  is  its 
material  cause.  The  final  cause  of  a  bridge  is  the 
passage  of  a  river ;  its  material  cause,  the  stones ;  its 
formal  cause,  the  arch ;  and  its  efficient  cause,  the  archi- 
tect with  his  workmen.  Now,  though  we  can  hardly 
say  with  Dr.  Eeid  (WW.  526)  that  these  four  causes  are 
but  four  shades  of  the  same  meaning,  we  can  certainly 
maintain  that,  for  the  most  part,  they  constitute  together 
but  a  single  concrete ;  as  we  can  readily  see  in  the 
examples  of  the  watch  and  the  bridge.  It  is  evident, 
however,  that  such  examples  as  these,  let  them  be  as 
explanatory  as  they  may,  can  have  no  application  to,  or 
vitality  in,  Natural  Theology,  so  far  as,  in  its  very  terms, 
it  is  to  be  considered  a  manifestation  of  nature.  That 
there  are  these  causes  existent  in  human  affairs,  even  to 
an  almost  endless  extent,  is  not  the  question.  "We  have 
only  to  know  a  house,  or  a  ship,  or  a  canal,  or  a  railway, 
or  a  telegraph,  or  a  garter,  or  a  shoe  tie,  or  a  button,  or  a 
knife,  fork,  and  spoon,  to  understand  all  that.  But  are 
there  also  such  things  in  nature  ? — that  is  the  question  ; 
and  there  are  those  who  answer  it  in  the  affirmative  ; 
while  there  are  others,  again,  who  meet  it  with  a  direct 
negative.  And  this  is  the  clash :  here  is  the  very  edge 
— here  is  the  very  knot,  and  point,  and  core  of  the  battle. 
The  whole  business  of  Natural  Theology  lies  there — is 
there,  or  is  there  not,  design  ?  Is  there,  or  is  there  not,  a 
final  cause  in  nature  ?  If  there  be  anything  such  in 
nature — if  there  be  anything  in  nature  that,  by  very 
formation,  shows  design,  purpose,  intention  to  have  been 
its  origin,  then  there  is  also  proof  in  nature  of  an  efficient 
cause  that  gave  at  least  form  to  matter.  And  in  this 
way,  even  in  nature,  the  four  causes  would  be  seen  to 
constitute  together  but  a  single  concrete  quite  as  much 
and  as   manifestly  as  they  do  in  art.     Already,  indeed, 


MATTER  AND  FORM.  4o 

we  can  see  as  much  as  this  to  be  at  least  the  case  with 
the  material  and  the  formal  causes,  let  it  be  as  it  may 
with  the  others.      That  is,  either  apart  is  at  once  seen 
to  be  null.     If  matter  were   without  form,  it  would  be 
incognizable,  a  nonentity,  a  void,  something  nowhere  to  be 
seen  or  touched  or  heard.     Lump-paste,  lump-clay,  lump- 
metal  may  seem  formless  to  us,  and  yet  cognizable ;  but 
this  is  not  so.     Lump-paste,  lump-clay,  lump-metal   are 
substances,  each  with  its  own  qualities  ;  and  these  qualities 
are  to  each  its  form.     The  qualities  of  paste  are  not  the 
qualities   of   clay ;    nor  are  these  the  qualities  of  metal. 
Consequently,  all  three  are  distinguishable  the  one  from 
the  other.     A  substance  without  a  quality  were  a  non- 
ens,  and  a  quality  without  a  substance  were  but  a  fiction 
in  the  air.     Matter,  if  to  be,  must  be  permeated  by  form; 
and  equally  form,  if  to  be,  must  be  realized  by  matter. 
Substance   takes   being   from  quality  ;  quality,  actuality 
from  substance.     That  is  metaphysic  ;  but  it  is  seen  to  be 
as  well  physic, — it  is  seen  to  have  a  physical  existence  ; 
it  is   seen    to  be  in  rerum  natura.     Form  is,  as  it  were, 
the  thought,  the  soul  of  matter ;  and  matter,  as  it  were, 
the  body,  the  externale  of  form.     So  it  is  that  a  thing  is 
understood  when  we  see  the  externale  in  the  internale  ; 
and,  quite  as  much,  the  internale  in  the  externale.     Form 
and  matter  are  the  same  synthesis,  or,  what  is  equally 
true,  they  are  the  same  antithesis.     But,  taking  it   for 
granted  that  this  will  be  readily  admitted  to  be  the  case 
as  regards  matter  and   form,  it  will  not  be  so  readily 
acknowledged,  we  may  assume,  that  final  causes  are  in 
similar  vital  relation  with  the  material  and  formal  ones. 
That  these  latter  causes  are  but  the  vehicles  in  realiza- 
tion of  final  causes, — this,  in  fact,  is  but  the  matter  in 
dispute,  and  can  never   be  expected  to  be  accepted  by 
those     who    oppose     final     causes    themselves.       What 
we  have  presently   historically  to   see,  however,  is  pre- 


44  GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  THIED. 

cisely  this  doctrine  in  Greece  —  that  material  causes 
(with  formal)  are  but  the  implements,  and  instruments, 
and  scaffolding  of  final  causes.  It  is  in  this  mood 
that  Cudworth  says,  "  To  take  away  all  final  causes 
from  the  things  of  nature  is  the  very  spirit  of 
atheism  :  it  is  no  prejudice  or  fallacy  imposed  on  our- 
selves to  think  that  the  frame  and  system  of  this  whole 
world  was  contrived  by  a  perfect  understanding  and 
mind."  As  another  modern  illustration,  we  may  say  that 
there  is  a  passage  in  the  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments 
which  almost  bears  out  the  supposition  that  even  Adam 
Smith  saw  the  one  set  of  causes  to  be  but  the  comple- 
ment of  the  other.  "  In  every  part  of  the  universe,"  he 
says,  "  we  observe  means  adjusted  with  the  nicest  artifice 
to  the  ends  which  they  are  intended  to  produce ;  and  in 
the  mechanism  of  a  plant  or  animal  body,  admire  how 
everything  is  contrived  for  advancing  the  two  great 
purposes  of  nature,  the  support  of  the  individual,  and  the 
propagation  of  the  species.  But  in  these,  and  in  all  such 
objects,  we  still  distinguish  the  efficient  from  the  final 
cause  of  their  several  motions  and  organizations.  The 
digestion  of  the  food,  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  and 
the  secretion  of  the  several  juices  which  are  drawn  from 
it,  are  operations  all  of  them  necessary  for  the  great 
purposes  of  animal  life ;  yet  we  never  endeavour  to 
account  for  them  from  those  purposes  as  from  their 
efficient  causes,  nor  imagine  that  the  blood  circulates,  or 
the  food  digests,  of  its  own  accord,  and  with  a  view  or 
intention  to  the  purposes  of  circulation  or  digestion." 
That  is,  we  never  fancy  that  the  one  side  suffices.  The 
"  purposes,"  which  are  the  final  causes,  do  not,  alone  and 
by  themselves,  realize  themselves ;  neither  do  we  imagine 
of  the  blood  and  the  food,  which  are  the  material  causes, 
that  the  one  circulates,  or  the  other  digests,  of  its  own 
accord.       Plainly,    Adam     Smith    here    has    excellently 


THE  PROOFS.  4o 

caught  sight  of  the  two  sides,  abstract,  idle,  dead,  apart, 
but  concrete,  energetic,  busy,  living  and  life-giving  in 
unity.  Of  course,  I  need  not  remark  that  his  efficient  is 
the  usual  material:  he  says  efficient  here,  because  what 
he  speaks  of  is  the  matter  or  material  operant. 

With  these  anticipatory  explanations,  I  may  now  pro- 
ceed. In  regard  to  the  history  of  the  proofs  for  the 
Being  of  a  God,  we  are  now  arrived,  as  has  been  said, 
within  sight  of  Greece.  As  I  am  not  intending  at 
present  to  expatiate  on  these  proofs  themselves ;  so  I 
shall  not  take  up  your  time  with  any  rehearsal  of  the 
various  classifications  and  designations  proposed  in  their 
regard  by  the  various  authorities.  It  shall  be  enough 
for  us  that  all  of  these,  with  whatever  peculiarity  of 
dressing,  come,  in  the  end,  to  the  three  arguments  in  and 
with  which  Kant  assumes  to  comprehend  and  exhaust 
the  subject.  That  is,  there  is,  first,  the  Cosmological ; 
second,  the  Teleological ;  and,  third,  the  Ontological 
argument.  There  is  no  dispute  as  to  the  position  of 
this  last.  That  argument,  the  ontological  one,  does  not 
appear  in  history  until  in  the  time  of  Anselm  Christianity 
has  been  for  centuries  the  dominant  religion  in  Europe. 
About  the  order  of  the  two  others  there  has  been  some 
little  difference  ;  Kant  characterizing  the  teleological 
argument  as  the  oldest,  and  Hegel  postponing  it  to  the 
cosmological.  It  has  been  usual,  however,  to  speak  of 
the  latter  in  connection  with  Aristotle,  and  at  all  events 
it  seems,  on  the  whole,  more  convenient  to  begin  with  the 
teleological  argument.  Begin  with  which  we  may, 
however,  and  let  them  be  separated  from  each  other  as 
they  may  be  in  time,  the  three,  after  all,  do  constitute 
together  but  the  three  undulations  of  a  single  wave, 
which  wave  is  but  a  natural  rise  and  ascent  to  God,  on 
the  part  of  man's  own  thought,  with  man's  own  experience 
and  consciousness  as  the  object  before  him. 


46  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

The  word  Teleology  (due  as  a  word  probably  to  Wolff) 
has,  iu  its  meaning  at  all  events,  always  been  associated 
with  the  name  of  Anaxagoras.  He,  so  far  as  history 
teaches,  is  the  acknowledged  originator  of  the  idea, 
That  is  to  be  admitted.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that, 
whatever  others  may  seem  to  have  said  in  the  same 
direction,  it  was  Anaxagoras  who,  for  the  first  time  in 
Greece,  perhaps  in  the  world,  spoke  of  the  beauty  and 
order  in  the  universe  being  due  to  a  designing  mind. 
We  have  but  to  look  to  the  single  fragment  of  his  lost 
work,  irepl  (pi/aem,  which  (the  fragment)  has  been  pre- 
served to  us  by  Simplicius,  to  become  aware  of  such 
clearness  and  fulness  on  the  part  of  Anaxagoras  in  his 
conception  of  the  i>ov<;,  nous,  as  could  not  fail  to 
impress  on  his  successors  the  necessary  problem, 
generally,  of  what  is  meant  by  teleology,  and  must 
perfectly  justify,  as  well,  the  position  which  has  been 
assigned  to  him  at  their  head.  "  ISTous  (Intelligence)," 
he  says  there,  "is  infinite  and  absolute,  free  from  ad- 
mixture with  anything  else,  alone  by  itself ;  it  is  om- 
niscient and  omnipotent,  and  has  disposed  all  things,  in 
order  and  in  beauty,  within  the  encompassing  whole, 
where  the  stars  are,  and  the  sun,  and  the  moon,  and 
;ijther,  and  the  air."  This,  beyond  doubt,  is  fairly  to 
characterize  Mind  as  the  ultimate  causality  of  the 
universe,  and  of  the  order  and  design  we  see  in  it ;  and, 
very  certainly,  most  amply,  does  the  general  voice  of 
antiquity  confirm  the  gloss.  For  one,  Socrates,  in  the 
Fhcedo,  gives  very  full  testimony  to  this  effect.  He  had 
heard  a  book  of  Anaxagoras'  read,  he  says,  in  which  it 
was  mainiained  that  vovs,  which  may  be  translated 
mind,  understanding,  reason,  was  the  disposing  and 
arranging  principle  in  the  universe,  and  he  had  been 
mightily  pleased  therewith.  For  it  seemed  to  him  right 
and    excellently    well   that     an    intelligence    should    be 


SOCRATES  IN  THE  PIL-EDO.  47 

recognised  as  the  cause  of  all  tilings,  inasmuch  as,  in  that 
case,  everything  would  find  itself  precisely  where  it  was 
best  that  it  should  be ;  so  that,  accordingly,  such  con- 
sideration would  directly  lead  us  to  a  perfect  explanation 
of  anything  in  the  world  around  us  which  we  might  be 
curious  to  understand.  In  a  personal  reference,  for 
example,  it  became  a  man  to  ask,  whether  for  himself  or 
others,  only  what  was  best.  To  know  that  was  the  same 
thing  as  to  know  what  was  worst ;  for  in  a  single 
cognition  both  lay  (the  proposition  which  is  more 
familiar  to  us  now-a-days,  perhaps,  as  the  dictum  de  vcro ; 
that  the  truth,  namely,  is  the  index  sui  d  falsi).  But  it 
is  this  that  has  specially  struck  the  mind  of  Socrates. 
What  an  inestimable  good  it  will  be  to  come  to  under- 
stand everything  by  being  made  to  see  that  au  intelli- 
gence has  placed  it  precisely  where  it  is  best  for  it ! 
Nothing  could  better  have  suited  him  than  such  a 
doctrine.  What  was  as  it  should  be,  justice,  right, 
reason,  moral  and  intellectual  truth  —  that  was  the 
special  qiiest  of  Socrates  at  all  times.  Socrates  is  under- 
stood to  have  had  no  favour  for  Mctcorologia,  speculation 
into  things  celestial.  Nay,  Xenophon  introduces  him  as 
calling  this  very  Anaxagoras  mad  in  the  special  reference 
(Mem.  iv.  7.  6).  Not  but  that  Socrates,  as  we  may  see 
further,  has  his  own  interest  in  cosmologia,  if  not  in 
meteorologia.  It  is  only  as  characteristic  of  him,  indeed, 
that  he  should  be  made  to  say  here :  "  It  appeared  to  me 
ev  e%eiv — it  appeared  to  me  to  be  excellently  well  that 
'  the  Nous  should  be  the  cause  of  all  things ; "  for  it 
certainly  belonged  to  his  very  inmost  and  dearest  thought 
that  all  things  should  be  found  to  be  framed  and  arranged 
by  intelligence,  and  disposed  according  to  what  is  best. 
There  are  other  expressions  in  Plato,  not  always  in  the 
mouth  of  Socrates,  quite  to  the  same  effect  as  regards  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras  holding  and  disposing  all  things  at 


48  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

its  own  sovereign  best.  Such  expressions  are  to  be 
found  in  the  Laws  (967  B),  for  example,  and  in  the 
Cratylus  (400  A,  413  C)  more  than  once.  But  it  is  this 
great  passage  in  the  Phcedo  that  must  be  considered  the 
locus  proprius  on  the  point.  Socrates,  in  it,  dwells  at 
very  considerable  length  on  the  whole  matter.  It  may 
almost  be  referred  to,  actually  has  been  referred  to,  as  an 
example  and  proof  of  Socrates'  polylogia,  his  Rcdscligkeit, 
his  loquacity,  and,  as  Smollett  says,  clack.  In  point  of 
fact,  there  is  no  fuller  reference  to  the  consideration  in 
debate  to  be  found  anywhere,  and  Socrates  does  seem  to 
have  taken  occasion  from  it  to  deliver  himself  in  full 
freedom,  unrestrictedly  at  large.  He  expatiates,  positively, 
on  the  expectations  which  Anaxagoras  had  conjured  up 
in  him,  expectations  quite  contradictorily  meteorological, 
after  all,  seeing  that,  in  great  measure,  they  concern  the 
shape  of  the  earth,  the  sun,  and  the  moon,  and  the  com- 
parative courses  of  the  stars, — he  expatiates  at  great 
length  on  these  expectations,  positively,  and  he  would 
not  have  given  them  up,  he  says,  iroWov,  for  a  great 
deal.  Then  he  expatiates  at  equal  length  on  his  dis- 
appointments, negatively,  when,  most  eagerly  possessing 
himself  of  the  books  and  most  keenly  reading  them,  he 
found  the  man  making  no  use  whatever  of  the  Nous,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  in  all  actual  explanations  of  things,  calling 
in  only  mechanical  causes,  airs,  and  aethers,  and  waters, 
and  other  aroira  the  like,  quite  as  before  ! — just  as  though, 
says  Socrates,  it  should  be  first  affirmed  of  Socrates  that 
he  did  all  that  he  did  by  his  own  understanding,  and 
then  sapiently  subjoined  as  if  by  way  of  example,  that  it 
was  because  of  such  and  such  bones  and  tendons,  so  and 
so  constructed,  that  he  sat  there,  the  real  reason  being 
that  it  seemed  to  the  Athenians  best  to  condemn  Socrates, 
and  to  himself  best  to  abide  the  result.  "Else,  by  the 
dog, "  he  exclaims,  "  methinks  these  bones  and  tendons 


THE  CAUSES  TOGETHER  CONCRETE "  ABSTRACT."       49 

would,  long  ere  this,  have  been  somewhere  about  Megara 
or  the  Boeotian  confines,  transported  thither  on  the 
thought  of  what  seemed  best." 

We  see  here  that  Socrates  not  only  understood  the 
principle  of  Anaxagoras  with  Anaxagoras'  own  further 
stultification  of  it,  but  also,  perfectly,  the  distinction 
between  final  and  mechanical  causes.  Proximately,  it 
was  certainly  because  of  certain  bodily  antecedents  that 
Socrates  remained,  as  he  did,  sitting  in  prison ;  but,  as 
certainly,  for  all  that,  it  was  the  resolution  of  his  own 
mind  that  was  the  final  cause.  Here,  too,  this  also  is 
to  be  seen,  that  the  two  sorts  of  causes  do  not  remain 
abstract,  that  is,  as  Bacon  (compare  the  Be  Augmcntis  in 
its  correspondent  part  with  The  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing, ii.  8.  2)  explains  the  word  abstract,  "severed,"  or 
"dissevered,"  from  all  else;  but  that  they  are,  in  rerum 
natura,  concretely  associated.  The  centrifugal  force,  in 
the  revolution  of  the  planets,  is  not  the  same  as  the 
centripetal:  rather,  the  one  is  directly  the  reverse  or 
the  opposite  of  the  other.  Nevertheless,  in  the  words 
of  Mr.  Clerk  Maxwell,  they  are  "merely  partial  and 
different  aspects  of  the  same  stress."  In  point  of  fact, 
as  already  seen  in  regard  to  form  and  matter,  this  syn- 
thesis in  antithesis,  this  one  of  two,  this  breadth  of  a 
duality  in  the  unity  of  strain,  seems  to  be  the  cosmical 
truth,  and  alone  valid.  There  cannot  be  action  without 
reaction  ;  and  the  one  abiding  reality  is  the  single  nisus 
between,  that  conjoins  no  less  than  it  disjoins.  It  is 
the  to  avri^ovv  crv^epov,  the  coherent  disherent,  attri- 
buted to  Heraclitus  by  Aristotle,  who  adds  "  that  the 
fairest  harmony  results  from  differents,  and  that  all  things 
are  produced  from  strife"  (Mh.  Nic.  viii.  1).  The  two 
sides,  it  would  seem,  though  they  stand  over  against 
each  other,  and  are  absolutely  opposed  the  one  to  the 
other,  do  not,  for  all  that,  subvert  or  destroy  each  other, 

D 


50  CIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  THIED. 

but,  on  the  contrary,  even  in  and  by  their  opposition, 
conserve  and  maintain  each  other. 

And  so  it  precisely  is  with  Socrates  here.  The  bones 
and  tendons  that  keep  him  in  prison  would  in  themselves 
be  no  better  than  null  were  it  not  for  the  volition  that 
animates  them ;  and  neither  would  this  volition  itself  be 
anything  were  it  not  for  the  bones  and  tendons  that 
realize  it.  Reaction  depends  on  action,  centrifugal  force 
on  centripetal  force,  repulsion  on  attraction,  and  even 
energy  must  have  its  support  in  corporeity.  It  is 
Newton  himself  who  says,  Virtus  sine  substantia  subsis- 
tere  non  potest. 

Authorities,  however,  are  largely  neglected  now-a-days, 
and  it  is  widely  the  fashion  at  present  to  have  changed 
all  that — it  is  widely  the  fashion,  indeed,  not  only  to 
separate  final  and  efficient  (or  mechanical)  causes  as 
irreconcilable  the  one  with  the  other,  but  even  to  de- 
stroy those  before  these.  And  this  even  by  reference  to 
such  philosophers  as  Descartes  and  Bacon.  Mr.  Buckle, 
for  one,  is  very  apt  to  rise  authoritatively  on  triumphant 
toes  in  this  matter  as  regards  both.  And,  indeed,  both 
philosophers  can  be  quoted,  as  though  they  were  minded, 
each,  to  dispute  the  truth  of  final  causes.  But,  for  all 
that,  suppose  we  do  not  simply  accept  the  allegation — 
suppose,  on  the  contrary,  that,  .as  in  the  case  of  Charles  II. 
and  the  dead  fish,  we  examine,  rather,  into  its  truth, 
perhaps  we  shall  find  that  the  accompaniment  of  a  grain 
of  salt  may  not  prove  altogether  superfluous.  As  regards 
Descartes,  for  example,  it  will  not  be  found  that  he  at 
all  denied  the  existence  of  final  causes ;  and  if  he  dis- 
couraged, which  he  undoubtedly  did,  the  inquisition  of 
them,  his  reason,  his  motive  was  not  that  he  respected  them 
less,  but  that  he  respected  the  place  and  perfection  of 
the  Deity  more.  Any  prohibition  in  the  case  of  the 
former  arose  wholly  and  solely  from  devotion  in  the  case 


DESCARTES GASSENDI.  5  1 

of  the  latter.  In  fact,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  what 
wholly  and  solely  determined  him  here,  was  the  peculi- 
arity of  his  conception  in  regard  to  the  Divine  Being. 
That  conception  was  so  high  that  it  appeared  pre- 
sumptuous to  Descartes  to  make  one,  as  it  were,  in  the 
counsels  of  the  Eternal  as  regards  the  creation  of  the 
world,  at  the  same  time  that  our  limited  faculties  ran  the 
risk,  in  such  a  daring,  of  seeing  imperfection  where  there 
was  perfection  alone.  Gassendi,  I  may  observe,  has  a 
remarkable  answer  to  Descartes  here,  the  foundation  of 
which  is  entirely  the  reference  to  design  (see  in  Des- 
cartes at  Med.  IV.). 

As  regards  Bacon,  it  is  on  him  that  the  greatest  stress 
is  laid  for  the  rejection  of  final  causes ;  but  perhaps, 
even  in  his  case,  as  I  have  suggested,  it  may  not  be 
necessary  to  take  the  allegation  au  pied  de  la  lettrc. 
Formal  causes,  final  causes,  metaphysic  itself, — and  it  is  in 
place  here  to  name  metaphysic,  for  such  causes,  with  the 
whole  logos  of  God,  constitute  the  very  contents  of  meta- 
physic,— formal  causes,  final  causes,  metaphysic  itself, 
Lord  Bacon  would  seem  to  have  thought  of  and  respected 
as  much  as  anything  whatever  in  physic  itself.  I  hold 
The  Advancement  of  Learning  alone  to  be  sufficient  to 
prove  this.  That  work,  in  numberless  editions,  is  quite 
possibly  in  the  hands  of  everybody,  and  it  constitutes 
the  original  English  form  of  what  is  known  as  the  De 
Augmentis  Scicntiarum.  Eeally,  one  has  only  to  look  at  it 
to  be  immediately  impressed  with  an  utter  surprise  that 
any  one  should  ever  have  considered  its  author  an  enemy 
of  what  is  known  as  the  metaphysical  region  of  inquiry. 
By  the  easy  trick  of  isolating  words  and  clauses,  we  may 
make  any  writer  argue  on  any  side  we  please ;  and  so  it 
has  been  done  with  Bacon.  The  seventh  section  of  the 
seventh  chapter  of  the  second  book  of  The  Advancement 
of  Learning,  for  example,  he  begins  in  this  way  :  "  The 


52  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

second  part  of  metaphysic  is  the  inquiry  of  final  causes, 
which  I  am  moved  to  report,  not  as  omitted,  but  as  mis- 
placed. And  yet  if  it  were  but  a  fault  in  order,  I  would 
not  speak  of  it  .  .  .  but  the  handling  of  final  causes, 
mixed  with  the  rest  in  physical  inquiries,  hath  intercepted 
the  severe  and  diligent  inquiry  of  all  real  and  physical 
causes."  The  correspondent  Latin  is  to  the  same  effect  : 
"Tractatio  enim  causarum  nnalium  in  physicis,  in- 
quisitionem  causarum  physicarum  expulit  et  dejecit." 
There  can  be  no  doubt  from  such  words,  then,  but  that  it 
was  a  decided  opinion  of  Bacon's  that  the  "  handling," 
the  tractatio  of  final  causes,  "mixed  with  the  rest  in 
physical  inquiries,"  has  expelled  and  ejected  the  inquisi- 
tion of  physical  causes.  And  I  do  not  suppose  there  is 
any  one  who  will  deny  this.  It  is  matter  of  the  com- 
monest information  that  the  earliest  physical  explanations 
were  largely  rendered  impure  and  untrustworthy  by  the 
reference  of  phenomena,  not  to  literal  antecedents,  but  to 
figured  agencies.  Perhaps  we  have  not  lost  the  same 
habit  even  in  these  days  of  enlightenment.  Falling 
bodies  do  not  any  longer  seek  the  earth  by  appetite, 
perhaps ;  but  we  have  still  many  other  such  like  tropes 
in  abundance. 

It  is  matter,  then,  of  the  commonest  information  that 
the  earliest  physical  explanations  were  apt  to  be  dis- 
figured, or  sublimed,  by  all  manner  of  metaphors,  tropes, 
and  personifications.  So  it  was,  as  Bacon  righteously 
complains,  that  real  physical  causes  were  apt  to  be  pushed 
out  or  overlaid.  We  will  all  readily  grant  that ;  but  we 
must  also  say  with  Bacon,  despite  any  such  abuse,  and 
Bacon  points  to  no  more,  that  the  general  problem  of 
final  causes  is  sufficiently  to  be  respected.  Final  causes 
constitute  to  Bacon  the  second  part  of  metaphysic,  as  the 
subject  of  forms  constitutes  to  him  the  first.  And 
Bacon  does  not  at  all  speak  ill  of  metaphysic.     "  Natural 


BACON  ON  CAUSES,  FORMS,  ETC.  53 

science  or  theory,"  he  says  in  The  Advancement  of  Learning 
(ii.  7.  2),  is  divided  into  physic  and  metaphysic."  The 
latter  word,  metaphysic,  he  adds,  is  used  by  him  "in 
a  differing  sense  from  that  that  is  received."  For  us 
here,  then,  it  becomes  necessary  to  know  what  that 
"  differing  sense  "  is  ;  and  Bacon,  on  that  head,  leaves  us 
in  no  difficulty.  In  the  first  place,  we  have  (3)  this : 
"  I  intend  philosopliia  prima,  summary  philosophy  and 
metaphysic,  which  heretofore  have  been  confounded  as 
one,  to  be  two  distinct  things ; "  and,  in  the  second  place, 
these  words :  "  Natural  theology,  which  heretofore  hath 
been  handled  confusedly  with  metaphysic,  I  have 
inclosed  and  bounded  by  itself."  It  appears  thus,  that, 
in  the  eyes  of  Bacon,  metaphysic  must  lose  two  main 
sciences  or  disciplines  that  formerly  belonged  to  it, 
Nevertheless,  it  must  be  said  that  even  to  Bacon  meta- 
physic must  still  remain  a  very  sovereign  region  of  human 
intelligence.  In  "  what  is  left  remaining  for  metaphysic  " 
(his  own  words)  he  directly  rules  that  "physic  should 
contemplate  that  which  is  inherent  in  matter,  and  there- 
fore transitory ;  and  metaphysic  that  which  is  abstracted 
and  fixed;  and  again,  that  physic  should  handle  that 
which  supposeth  in  nature  only  a  being  and  moving  and 
natural  necessity;  and  metaphysic  should  handle  that 
which  supposeth  further  in  nature  a  reason,  understanding, 
and  platform  or  idea.  .  .  .  Physic  inquireth  and  handleth 
the  material  and  efficient  causes:  metaphysic  handleth 
the  formal  and  final  causes."  This,  then,  is  to  give  to 
metaphysic  a  serious  and  principal  role.  While  physic 
contemplates  in  nature  only  what  is  external,  metaphysic 
contemplates  in  the  same  nature,  the  reason,  the  under- 
standing, the  idea.  It  is  important  to  observe  that 
reference  to  nature :  the  reason,  the  understanding,  the 
idea  of  metaphysic,  according  to  Bacon,  is  a  reason,  an 
understanding,  an  idea  that  is  actually  in  nature,  and  no 


54  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

mere  figure  of  speech,  no  mere  figment  of  phantasy.     But 
what  under  metaphysic  are  called  reason,  understanding, 
and  idea,  are  also  called,  and  precisely  in  the  same  pages, 
formal  and  final  causes.      Formal  and  final  causes  are  to 
Bacon,  therefore,  each  a  reason,  an    understanding,   an 
idea  that  is  in  nature ;  and  I  can  hardly  think  that  any 
metaphysician,  even  in  these  clays,  would  wish  for  them 
a  deeper   place   or   a  more   essential   function.       Bacon 
insists  very  much  on  formal  causes :  he  is  even  inclined  to 
place  them  in  a  region  by  themselves,  a  region  that  is  to 
De  a  sort    of    reformed,  and    improved,  and    renovated 
"  natural  magic,"  as  he  calls  it.     Bacon  laments  (5)  that 
formal    causes    "  may  seem    to    be  nugatory   and    void, 
because  of  the  received  and  inveterate  opinion  that  the 
inquisition  of  man  is  not  competent  to  find  out  essential 
forms  aud  true  differences."      He,  for  his  part,  holds  that 
"  the  invention  of  forms  is  of  all  other  parts  of  knowledge 
the  worthiest  to  be  sought,  if  it  be  possible  to  be  found. 
And,  as  for  the  possibility,  they  are  ill  discoverers  that 
think  there  is  no  land,  when  they  can  see  nothing  but 
sea."     Of  these  forms,  "  the  essences  (upheld  by  matter) 
of  all  creatures  do  consist."     In  short,  Bacon  would  seem 
to  have  in  mind  both  Plato  and  Aristotle  when  they  will 
have  us  pass  beyond  all  externality  to  the  internality 
itself  which  reason  alone  touches  (ov  avrbs  o  A.0709  airreTat), 
,  the  6W&><?  ovra  which  are,  as  Schelling  interprets,    the 
very  "  subjects  of  what  is  predicted  of  the  ovra"      Such, 
then,  are  the  forms  of  Bacon,  the  very  subjects  of  things 
which  reason  itself  touches.      And    no    less   decided   is 
Bacon  as    regards  metaphysic   in  its  reference  to  final 
causes.     "  Both  causes,"  he  says  (7),  "physical  and  meta- 
physical, are  true  and  compatible,  the  one  declaring  an 
intention,  the  other  a  consequence  only,"  for  "  men  are 
extremely   deceived  if  they   think   there   is  an    enmity 
between  them."     "  Physic  carrieth  men  in  narrow  and 


THE  XOUS  OF  ANAXAGORAS.  55 

restrained  ways,  subject  to  many  accidents  of  impediments, 
imitating  the  ordinary  flexuous  courses  of  nature ; "  but 
everywhere  broad  are  the  ways  for  the  wise  in  metaphysic 
"  which  doth  enfranchise  the  power  of  man  unto  the 
greatest  liberty  and  possibility  of  works  and  effects"  (G). 
Bacon,  in  fact,  has  not  a  word  to  say  against  metaphysic 
or  final  causes,  but  only  against  their  "  abuse,"  when  they 
happen  to  be  "  misplaced." 

We  have  now  left  Anaxagoras  and  his  commentators 
a  long  way  behind  us,  as  though  we  had  forgotten  them, 
and  started  off  into  quite  another  region.  What  con- 
cerns us  with  Anaxagoras,  however,  is  the  vov<; ;  and  the 
vovs  means  for  us  design,  at  the  same  time  that  the  forces 
of  design,  the  realizing  agents  of  design,  are  final  causes. 
It  is  with  Anaxagoras  that  design  comes  in,  that  final 
causes  first  make  their  appearance ;  and  it  is  here  and 
now,  where  there  is  question  of  Anaxagoras,  that  there 
should  be  question  also  of  that  part  of  metaphysic  which 
embraces  the  consideration  of  such  causes.  And  here, 
evidently,  it  was  impossible  to  avoid  the  relative  discus- 
sion, especially  of  Bacon,  in  regard  to  whom  it  has 
hitherto  been  received  as  an  established  commonplace 
that  he  is  the  declared  foe — the  foe  a  Voutrance  of  any- 
thing and  everything  that  concerns  the  subject  of  final 
causes.  It  is  indeed  surprising  that,  with  such  a  common 
English  book  before  us  as  The  Advancement  of  Learning, 
any  such  opinion  should  ever  have  been  so  uncondition- 
ally expressed.  Even  of  Natural  Theology,  Bacon's 
deliberate  utterances  are  such  as  may  surprise  not  a  few. 
He  directly  says,  for  example,  "  As  concerning  divine 
philosophy  or  natural  theology,  it  is  that  knowledge  or 
rudiment  of  knowledge  concerning  God,  which  may  be 
obtained  by  the  contemplation  of  His  creatures  ;  which 
knowledge  may  be  truly  termed  divine  in  respect  of  the 
object,  and  natural  in  respect  of  the  light.  .  .  .  Where- 


oG  GIFFOKD  LECTUBE  THE  THIRD. 

fore,  by  the  contemplation  of  nature,  to  induce  and 
enforce  the  acknowledgment  of  God,  and  to  demonstrate 
His  power,  providence,  and  goodness,  is  an  excellent  argu- 
ment, and  hath  been  excellently  handled  by  divers" 
(Adv.  of  Learn,  ii.  6.  1).  "  It  is  an  assured  truth,  and  a 
conclusion  of  experience,"  he  says  elsewhere  in  the  same 
work  (i.  1.  3),  "  that  a  little  or  superficial  knowledge  of 
philosophy  may  incline  the  mind  of  man  to  atheism,  but 
a  further  proceeding  therein  doth  bring  the  mind  back 
again  to  religion.  For  in  the  entrance  of  philosophy  when 
the  second  causes,  which  ere  next  unto  the  senses,  do 
offer  themselves  to  the  mind  of  man,  if  it  dwell  and  stay 
there  it  may  induce  some  oblivion  of  the  highest  cause  ; 
but  when  a  man  passeth  on  farther,  and  seeth  the 
dependence  of  causes  and  the  works  of  Providence,  then, 
according  to  the  allegory  of  the  poets,  he  will  easily  be- 
lieve that  the  highest  link  of  nature's  chain  must  needs 
be  tied  to  the  foot  of  Jupiter's  chair."  Lastly,  here,  as 
regards  Bacon,  we  may  refer  to  that  grand  passage  in  the 
Essays  that  begins  :  "  I  had  rather  believe  all  the  fables 
in  the  'Legend,'  and  the  'Talmud,'  and  the  'Alcoran,' 
than  that  this  universal  frame  is  without  a  mind."  Even 
of  the  fool  it  is  not  credible  to  Bacon  that  he  hath 
thought,  if  he  hath  mid,  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God. 
Even  the  fool,  Bacon  thinks,  must  have  said  it  only,  as  it 
were,  "  by  rote  to  himself."  That  is  an  excellent  idea, 
the  only  speaking  by  rote  !  "  Atheism,"  as  he  says 
further,  "  is  rather  in  the  lip  than  in  the  heart  of  man." 
"  For,  certainly,  man  is  of  kin  to  the  beasts,  by  his  body  ; 
and  if  he  be  not  of  kin  to  God,  by  his  spirit,  he  is  a  base 
and  ignoble  creature."  Surely,  then,  in  every  way  it  is  a 
noble  testimony  that  Bacon  bears  to  final  causes,  to  meta- 
physic,  and  to  Natural  Theology. 

Of  the  teleological  argument,  Dr.  Reid  says  that  "  it  has 
this  peculiar  advantage,  that  it  gathers  strength  as  human 


REID,  NEWTON,  HUME.  57 

knowledge  advances,  and  is  more  convincing  at  present 
than  it  was  some  centuries  ago."  This  was  all  very  well 
when  the  "  present  "  was  a  present  that  had  before  it  a 
second  edition  of  the  Principia  of  Newton,  in  which  it 
was  mentioned  as  a  thing  understood  that  said  Principia 
were  a  pmesidium  munitissimum,  a  most  perfect  defence 
against  the  impetus  atheorum,  the  sallies  of  atheists — 
aud  a  present  that  had  before  it  also,  at  the  hands  of 
Lagrange,  an  irrefutable  demonstration  of  the  stability  of 
the  universe  :  it  was  all  very  well  for  that "  present,"  with 
its  Newtons  and  Lagranges,  to  hug  itself  on  its  own 
security,  and  more  or  less  directly  gird  at  Alphonso  of 
Castile,  but  what  of  this  "  present  "  that  is  our  present  ? 
Our  task  now  is  not  as  the  task  then.  Then  even  a 
Hume,  who  sought  in  his  somewhat  narrow  ingenious  way 
to  reason  us  out  of  both  soul  and  body,  and  the  universe 
out  of  God,  felt  forced  even  by  necessity  to  speak  thus  : 
"  "Were  men  led  into  the  apprehension  of  invisible,  intel- 
ligent power  by  a  contemplation  of  the  works  of  nature, 
they  could  never  possibly  entertain  any  conception  but  of 
one  single  beins,  who  bestowed  existence  and  order  on 
this  vast  machine,  and  adjusted  all  its  parts,  according  to 
one  regular  plan  or  connected  system.  .  .  .  All  things  in 
the  universe  are  evidently  of  a  piece.  Everything  is 
adjusted  to  everything.  One  design  prevails  through  the 
whole.  And  this  uniformity  leads  the  mind  to  acknow- 
ledge one  author.  .  .  .  Adam,  rising  at  once,  in  Paradise, 
and  in  the  full  perfection  of  his  faculties,  would  naturally, 
as  represented  by  Milton,  be  astonished  at  the  glorious 
appearance  of  nature — the  heavens,  the  air,  the  earth,  his 
own  organs  and  members  ;  and  would  be  led  to  ask 
whence  this  wonderful  scene  arose  "  {Nat  Hist,  of  Bel. 
sections  i  and  ii.).  When  it  is  the  sceptical  Hume  that 
speaks  thus,  we  do  not  wonder  to  find  the  pious  Newton 
always  expressing  himself  with  the  profoundest  reverence 


58  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRD. 

and  admiration  of  the  divinity  he  saw  everywhere  in  the 
mighty  scheme  of  the  universe,  that  was  for  the  first  time, 
perhaps,  discovered  in  all  its  mightiness  only  to  him. 
The  writers  that  treat  of  the  life  and  works  of  Newton 
always  refer  to  this.  There  are  his  queries  in  his  Optics, 
as,  "  Whence  is  it  that  nature  does  nothing  in  vain  ;  and 
whence  arises  all  that  order  and  beauty  which  we  see  in 
the  world  ?  How  came  the  bodies  of  animals  to  be  con- 
trived with  so  much  art;  and  for  what  ends  were  their 
several  parts  ?  Was  the  eye  contrived  without  skill  in 
optics,  and  the  ear  without  knowledge  of  sounds  ?  " 
Then,  with  all  else,  there  is  that  marvellous  scholium 
generale  in  the  third  book  of  the  Principia  :  "  Cum  una- 
quaeque  spatii  particula  sit  semper,  et  unumquodque 
durationis  indivisibile  momentum  sit  ubique,  certe  rerum 
omnium  Fabricator  et  Dominus  non  erit  nunquam,  nus- 
quam."  ("  As  every  particle  of  space  is  always,  and  every 
indivisible  moment  of  duration  is  everywhere,  assuredly 
the  Fabricator  and  Lord  of  all  things  will  not  be  never, 
nowhere")  Quite  in  place  here  is  that  colossal  con- 
ception on  the  part  of  Newton  of  the  vast  infinity  of 
space  being  the  sensorium  of  Deity.  In  the  course  of 
what  follows  the  above  words,  Newton  exclaims :  "  Deus 
est  unus  et  idem  Deus  semper  et  ubique ; "  and,  farther 
on, "  hunc  cognoscimus  solummodo  per  proprietates  ejus  et 
attributa  ;  "  and  he  adds, "  et  per  causas  finales  " — "  God  is 
the  one  and  the  same  God  always  and  everywhere — Him 
we  know  by  His  qualities  and  attributes — and  by  final 
causes."  I  ought  to  translate  all  that  refers  to  God  in 
this  grand  scholium ;  but  I  must  content  myself  now  by 
declaring  of  the  scholium  itself  that  it  requires  to  be 
neglected  by  no  student  of  philosophy.  As  thought  is 
the  principle  of  spirit,  so  is  gravity  the  principle,  the 
essence,  the  formal  cause,  the  very  self  of  matter  as 
matter.     It  was  Newton  discovered  that — that  and  the 


NEWTON.  5  0 

system  of  the  heavens.  There  have  been  some  unique 
men  in  tills  world,  as — say  Shakespeare !  but  never, 
probably,  was  there  a  man  more  unique  than  Newton  :  in 
his  peculiar  faculty  he  rises  higher,  more  remote  from, 
more  unapproachable  of,  ordinary  men,  than  any  other, 
perhaps,  that  ever  lived.  Xewton  is  the  priest  and 
interpreter  of  the  orbs  that  roll — the  Brahmin  of  the 
universe. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

Anaxagi  >ras,  the  »ov$  —  Aristotle  —  Understanding  —  Pythagoreans 
—  Pantheism  —  Lord  Gifford  —  Baghavad  Gita  —  The  uoi;  to 
Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle  —  Grote,  Schwegler,  Zeller  — The 
world  a  life  —  Berkeley,  Cudworth,  Plato,  Zorzi  —  Subject 
and  object  —  Nature  and  thought  —  Externality  and  inter- 
vality — Bruno — Universal  and  particular — Spinoza — Physical 
theories — Space  and  time— Hodgson,  Carlyle,  Berkeley,  Beid, 
Leibnitz,  Kant— But  lor  an  eye  and  an  ear,  the  world  utterly 
dark,  utterly  silent. 

Returning  to  Anaxagoras,  it  is  still  a  question  how  we 
are  to  decide  him  to  have  regarded  his  principle  of  the 
vovs,  whether  as  a  power  immanent,  that  is,  dwelling 
in  matter,  or  as  a  power  transcendent,  that  is,  outside 
of  and  above  matter.  It  really  seems  to  me  difficult, 
however,  to  give  any  other  interpretation  than  the  latter 
to  the  words  of  Diogenes  Laertius  at  all  events.  As  though 
actually  quoting  from  the  very  work  of  Anaxagoras, 
Diogenes  says,  iravra  ^pr']fiara  -qv  6fiov,  all  things  were 
together,  elra  vovi  i\8a>v  aura  hteKoa/jurjcre,  then  vov<i 
coining,  orderly  disposed  them.  We  seem  to  see  here 
one  thing  lying  by  itself  apart,  and  another,  at  some 
certain  moment  of  time,  coming,  moving  towards  it,  and 
adding  itself  to  it.  But  that  being  so,  vovs  is  not 
immanent  in  matter,  but  transcendent  over  it.  Aris- 
totle, near  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  book  of  the 
Physics,  makes  the  distinction  between  the  two  positions, 
what  was  first  and  what  came  second,  even  stronger. 
His  words  are,  "  Anaxagoras  says  that  all  things  being 
together,  and  having  remained  so  at  rest  an  endless  time, 


UNDERSTANDING.  Gl 

vovs  set  motion  into  them  and  separated  them."  That, 
plainly,  is  to  the  effect  that  the  movement  was  set  into 
things  from  without,  and  not  developed  in  them  from 
within  ;  that  vov<;,  namely,  was  a  transcendent,  not  an 
immanent  principle. 

The  Germans  seem  to  incline,  on  the  whole,  however, 
to  adopt  the  mere  immanence  of  the  vovs.  To  some  of 
them  the  fault  of  theology  is  its  rigorous  separation  of 
the  opposites.  In  the  relation  of  God  and  the  world 
they  would  wish  to  see,  not  a  fixed  inconceivable  sun- 
deredness,  but  a  living  transition.  Others  would  wish 
us  to  see  in  the  i>o0?,  not  reason,  but  understanding. 
What  they  mean  by  understanding  is  what  some  time 
ago  I  endeavoured  to  figure  under  the  word  /V.0709.  You 
see  that  inexplicable  thing  a  reel  in  a  bottle ;  suppose 
now  it  were  all  explained  to  you,  every  step  in  the 
idea  that  generated  it  clear  before  your  eyes,  then  that 
X0709  (for  the  explanation  would  be  a  Xo'70?), — then  that 
\0709  would  be  the  Verstand,  the  understanding  of  the 
reel  in  the  bottle.  This  reel  would  no  longer  be  a  mere 
piece  of  inexplicable  matter ;  it  would  now  be  impreg- 
nated with  the  notion,  so  that  all  its  parts  were  held 
together  by  it,  and,  as  it  were,  one  in  it.  Xow  that  is 
what  the  vovs  is  held  by  some  to  be  in  relation  to  the 
world.  The  world  were  an  unintelligible  externality  and 
material  chaos,  did  not  the  understanding  enter  into  it 
as  a  connecting  and  explaining  tissue.  So  it  is  that 
even  the  Pythagoreans,  too,  explain  the  world ;  it  is  a 
congeries  of  externalities  ;  but  into  that  congeries  of  exter- 
nalities, mere  disjunct  atoms,  proportion  enters  ;  and  that 
proportion  gives  them  subsistence,  connection,  meaning, 
and  unity.  In  this  way  it  will  be  intelligible  what  is 
meant  by  an  understanding  being  sunk  into  the  things  of 
the  universe.  To  certain  Germans,  then,  vovs  is  such 
understanding — an  immanent  ideal  bond,  not  a  fashioning 


62  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

creator  apart  from,  and  independent  of  it.    This,  in  general, 
and  on  its  own  account,  is  a  point  of  view  necessary  for 
us  to  know,  even  with  reference  to  our  general  subject 
of  Natural  Theology.     I  mean  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
immanence  of  the  vovs  involves  what  is  called  pantheism. 
This  is  the  more  interesting  to  us  here  inasmuch  as  some 
of  the  expressions  in  which  Lord  Gifford  characterizes  his 
idea  of  God  may  seen  to  have  in  them  a  pantheistic  echo. 
As,  for  example,  these,  that  God  is  the  Infinite,  the  All, 
the  One,  and  the  Sole  Substance,  the  Sole  Being,  the  Sole 
Reality,  and  the  Sole  Existence.     Some  of  these  expres- 
sions  no   doubt,  even   as    pantheistic,  suggest   criticism. 
Reality  and    existence,  it  may  be   said,  for  instance,  are 
both  doubtful  words.     An  iron  nail  or  a  brass  button  is, 
as  we  generally  speak,  a  reality ;  but  God's  reality  must 
lie  a  much  other  reality  than  the  reality  of  such  as  these. 
Existence,   too,  at  least   in    certain   philosophical   works, 
has  been  pretty  well  exclusively  used  in  identically  the 
same  sense  as  reality  in  the  case  of  either  nail  or  button. 
A  brass  button  is  an  existence,  and  an  iron    nail  is  an 
existence,  —  the  word  existence  being  here   taken  in  its 
strictly  etymological  sense  as  a  compound  from  the  Latin 
words  ex  and  stare.     Whatever  finitely  stanch  out  to  sense, 
as  an  actual  object  seen  of  eye  or  touched  of  hand,  etc., 
is  an  existence ;  it  stands  up  and  out.      But  existence  in 
no  such  sense  as  that,  plainly,  can  be  predicated  of  God. 
God  is  not  an  object  for  eye,  or  ear,  or  touch,  or  any 
sense.     We  cannot  see  God  as  we  see  a  statue  or  a  house, 
or  hear  Him  as  we  hear  the  blowing  of  the  wind  or  the 
dashing  of  the  wave.     In  a  word,  God  is  to  be  thought 
as  infinite,  not  finite,  as  immaterial  and  not  material,  as  a 
spirit  and  not  as  a  body.      In  the  sense  alluded  to,  then, 
He  may  not  exist;  but  He  will  still  be,     The  soul  of  a 
man  will  be  granted  to  be — let  us  conceive  its  nature  to 
be,  how  we  may.     Even  the  crudest  judge  of  character 


PANTHEISM.  63 

has  not  his  idea  of  a  man  as  such  and  such  a  body  merely. 
There  really  is  an  entity  that  is  logically  distinguishable 
from  the  body,  and  is,  on  its  side,  as  much  a  one,  or  more 
a  one,  than,  on  the  other  side,  the  body  itself.  An  ego 
is  a  unity,  and  a  unity  of  the  whole  of  its  infinite  con- 
tents, take  it  how  you  may.  Logically,  then,  an  ego  is 
an  entity  on  its  own  account — an  integer,  self-contained 
and  self-complete  teres,  totum,  ac  rotundum.  An  ego,  of 
course,  makes  itself  known  only  through  and  by  means 
of  its  body,  but,  with  whatever  difference,  it  is  precisely 
so  with  God ;  it  is  the  very  contention  of  these  lectures 
that  God  makes  Himself  known  through  His  body,  which 
is  the  visible  world  without  and  the  intelligible  world 
within.  As  for  Lord  Gifford's  term,  substance,  again,  it 
reminds  at  once  of  Spinoza ;  substance  is  the  God  of 
Spinoza,  and  Spinoza,  as  we  know,  is  the  archpantheist. 
The  word  All,  again,  is  certainly  a  word  in  pantheistic 
parlance,  and  may,  as  the  others  may,  be  so  used  by 
Lord  Gifford.  Even  pantheistically,  however,  we  may 
stop  to  say,  it  is  a  very  objectionable  word  ;  for,  even  so, 
it  is  at  once  too  much  and  too  little.  Too  much  !  All, 
in  its  use  by  Lord  Gifford,  God  as  the  All,  cannot  mean 
stars  and  planets,  sun,  moon,  earth,  air,  seas,  and  con- 
tinents, minerals,  plants,  animals,  men, — collectively,  that 
is,  as  so  many  individual  objects  in  a  ring,  a  mere  outside 
aggregate,  there  materially  in  space,  and  now  materially 
in  time.  Etymologically,  no  doubt,  such  a  description 
of  an  All  as  God,  or  of  God  as  an  All,  may  seem  but  a 
necessary  inference  from  the  very  word  pantheism;  but 
it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  pantheist,  Oriental  or 
Occidental,  religious  or  philosophical,  ever  thought  of  his 
God  as  any  such  clumsy  miscellaneousness.  In  some  of 
the  books  of  the  Bhaghavad  Gita,  as  the  seventh,  the 
ninth,  and  the  tenth,  Krishna,  indeed,  may  be  heard 
exclaiming  to  Arjoon  :  "  I  am  sunshine,  and   I  am  rain  : 


G4  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

I  am  the  radiant  sun,  the  moon,  the  book  of  hymns, 
Mem  among  the  mountains ;  I  am  the  lion,  the  vowel 
A,"  etc.  etc.  No  doubt,  however,  these  are  but  as  so 
much  spray  from  the  overflow  of  the  Oriental  phantasy. 
Hardly  ever  is  it  the  case,  indeed,  that  they  occur  in 
that  bare  categorical  form.  More  commonly  the  phras- 
ing itself  shows  that  the  term  is  but  a  trope  :  "  I  am 
moisture  in  the  water,  light  in  the  sun  and  moon, 
sweet-smelling  savour  in  the  earth.  I  am  the  sacrifice, 
I  am  the  worship,  I  am  the  spices,  I  am  the  invocation, 
I  am  the  provisions,  I  am  the  fire,  I  am  the  victim,"  etc. 
etc.  In  such  form  as  that  it  is  quite  evident  that  there 
is  no  thought  of  an  assemblage  of  mere  outer  objects  as 
constituting  the  All  that  is  to  be  conceived  as  God. 
But  if  such  expressions  as  are  in  question,  and  so  taken, 
are  too  much,  they  are,  as  evidently,  all  too  little.  No 
such  names,  and  no  such  names  even  if  they  were  multi- 
plied a  thousandfold,  can  exhaust  the  infinity  in  unity, 
and  the  unity  in  infinity,  of  God.  That,  too,  is  a  way  of 
the  Orientals,  that  they  would  seek  by  mere  numberless 
namino-s  to  ascend  to  the  infinite  that  is  God ;  but,  again, 
the  Orientals  themselves  confess,  even  in  the  numberless- 
ness  of  their  namings,  the  impotence  of  the  numberless- 
ness  itself.  The  visible  is  but  an  accident  and  fringe  of 
the  invisible ;  no  myriad  namings  of  the  seen  can  reach 
the  unseen. 

To  certain  Germans,  then,  almost,  we  may  say,  to  the 
German  philosophical  historians  generally,  the  immanence 
of  the  vow  is  the  established  doctrine.  With  vovs,  they 
say,  there  certainly  comes  in,  and  for  the  first  time  in 
acknowledged  history,  the  principle  of  an  understanding, 
and  the  principle  of  an  understanding  that  is  self-deter- 
minative ;  but  still  we  are  not  to  think  of  the  vovs  in 
nature  as  of  a  mind  and  thinking  consciousness  in  the 
way  we  find  it  in  ourselves.     Nov?  is  to  be  conceived  of 


THE  NOTTS  TO  SOCKATES,  PLATO,  ARISTOTLE.  Go 

in  nature  as  we  see  laws  are :  we  know  by  the  inquiries 
of  our  sciences  that  in  the  universe  of  things  there  is  law, 
and  consequently,  so  far,  reason. 

In  a  good  deal  of  all  this,  however,  there  enters  the 
thought  that  there  is  the  danger  of  supposing  that  what 
Anaxagoras,  after  all,  meant  was  merely  adeuscx  maehina 
that  came  and  ordered  the  chaos,  a  Zeus,  a  Jupiter,  or 
other  merely  mythological  personage  of  the  early  crude 
imagination.  So  far  as  such  conception  is  concerned,  I 
think  it  is  right  to  contend  against  that.  Certain  it  is 
that  Anaxagoras  did  make  no  other  use,  so  far  as  the 
application  is  concerned,  of  his  principle  the  vovs  than 
such  deus  ex  maehina  that  was  no  more,  despite  all  his 
description  of  it,  than  the  first  cause  of  motion.  It 
seems  that  he  had  no  sooner  announced  it  in  general,  than 
he  set  himself,  in  particular,  to  the  usual  mechanical 
expedients.  It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  we  must 
think  the  vovs  a  merely  immanent  principle,  as  it  were, 
of  lineamentation  and  proportion  in  the  material  mass, 
and  that  it  was  not  to  be  conceived,  at  the  same  time,  as 
a  self-centred  fount  of  intelligence  and  of  intelligent 
action,  so  to  speak,  on  its  own  account  and  in  its  own 
self-dependence. 

It  seems  to  me  that  even  the  advocates  of  the  imma- 
nence of  the  vovs,  themselves,  do  not  regard  it  as,  so  to 
speak,  a  brutrfy  immanent  principle,  but  as  an  intelligent 
and  conscious  principle  that  has  in  it  the  distinction  of 
personality.  It  seems  to  me  also,  that  the  universal 
voice  of  antiquity  is  to  the  same  effect.  Even  Socrates, 
though  speaking  with  disappointment  of  the  application 
of  the  principle,  does  not  speak  differently  of  the  prin- 
ciple itself.  To  Socrates  the  vovs,  in  a  word,  was  an 
intelligent  principle  that  knew  the  better,  and  acted  on 
it.  Plato  repeats  this  description  at  least  three  times 
further;  twice  again,  indeed,  on  the  part  of  Socrates,  but 

E 


G6  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

once  on  that  of  another ;  so  that  of  his  own  relative  sen- 
timents there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt. 

As  for  Aristotle,  again,  it  would  take  up  too  much 
time  to  quote  all  that,  in  this  connection,  his  writings 
show,  but  we  must  see  a  passage  or  two.  In  the  De 
Anima  (404&)  he  has  this  on  Anaxagoras :  to  acrcov  rod 
zcaXco?  Kal  opOcos  (the  cause  of  the  good,  beautiful,  and 
right),  tov  vovv  Xeyei  (he  calls  the  vovs).  A  little  farther 
on  (405«18),  in  this  same  work,  we  find  the  vov<; 
characterized  as  "  a  principle  that  knows,  and  as  a  prin- 
ciple that  moves  the  to  irav  "  (the  all).  In  the  Metaphysic 
there  are  several  very  distinct  passages  to  a  like  effect. 
Anaxagoras,  he  says  once  (985<xl8),  "  in  his  explana- 
tion of  the  construction  of  the  world,  uses  his  vovs  as  a 
mere  stage  property ;  that  is,  he  only  lugs  it  in  when  he 
is  at  a  loss  otherwise."  That  concerns  the  application 
of  it.  But  the  main  passage  in  the  Metaphysic  is  this 
(084&8) :  "  These  (preceding)  principles  proved  insufficient 
to  explain  what  is ;  and,  in  further  effort,  this  now  sug- 
gested itself.  That  things  are  good,  and  beautiful,  and 
right  (eS  Kal  KaXws  e^eiv),  can  assuredly  not  be  ascribed 
to  fire,  or  earth,  or  anything  else  of  the  kind,  nor  yet  to 
accident  or  chance ;  and  so  it  was  that  when  Anaxagoras 
came  forward  with  the  proposition  that,  as  in  animals,  so 
in  all  nature,  vov<i  is  immanent  as  the  cause  of  the  world 
and  its  whole  orderly  arrangement,  he  appeared  as  though 
a  man  that  was  sober  in  comparison  with  mere  drunken 
stutterers  that  had  preceded  him.  .  .  .  Those,  then,  who 
followed  him,  made  the  cause  of  what  is  good  to  be  the 
principle  of  what  is,  and  of  the  movement  in  it." 
Especially  does  Aristotle  insist  on  the  unmixedness  and 
unmovedness  of  the  vovs,  no  doubt  having  in  mind  him- 
self his  own  principle  of  a  Trpcorov  klvovv  (a  first  mover), 
that,  unmixed  with  other  things  and  itself  unmoved, 
moves  all  of  them. 


THE  WORLD  A  LIFE.  67 

As  for  the  vov<;  of  Anaxagoras,  indeed,  being  a  personal 
self-conscious  reason,  such  as  we  conceive  on  the  part  of 
the  Divine  Being,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  such  is  the 
natural  inference  of  any  of  us  now-a-days  who  will  im- 
partially read  the  words  that  expressly  described  it ;  and 
there  can  be  as  little  doubt  that,  as  we  have  seen,  such 
was  the  general  understanding  on  the  part  of  antiquity. 
It  is  certainly  impossible  to  think  of  this  principle  as 
only  a  natural  power  sunk  into  matter,  as  Mr.  Grote  does. 
One,  too,  must,  with  Schwegler,  give  it  more  spiritual 
credit,  by  reason  of  the  attributes  of  thought  and  con- 
scious design  ascribed  to  it,  than  even  Zeller  does. 

It  appears  to  me  right,  at  the  same  time,  even  while 
assuming  vovt  to  be  capable  of  an  independent  existence 
on  its  own  account,  that  we  should  attribute,  almost  as 
partly  referred  to  already,  more  of  a  life  of  its  own,  and 
more  of  an  instinctive  reason  of  its  own,  to  nature  itself 
than  we  usually  do.  The  pious  Berkeley  {Siris,  276) 
vindicates  the  doctrine ;  and  it  is  surely,  as  a  doctrine, 
not  by  any  means  necessarily  either  atheism  or  pantheism. 
To  me  it  is  quite  as  certain  that  there  is  an  absolute  sub- 
ject, God,  as  it  is  certain  that  there  is  an  absolute  object, 
His  universe.  Still,  it  appears  to  me  that  the  object 
should  be  brought  much  nearer  the  subject  than  is  cus- 
tomary among  us.  If  we  view  the  object  as  the  other  of 
the  subject,  then  we  have  the  two,  as  I  think  we  ought 
to  have  them,  in  mutual  relation.  The  world,  as  there 
at  the  will  of  God,  is  still  the  work  of  God,  the  expression 
of  God ;  whatever  it  is,  it  is  still  of  God  :  there  must  be 
relation  between  them.  So  it  is,  in  fact,  that  there  is 
such  a  science  as  this  very  Natural  Theology  that  we  have 
before  us.  Bacon  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  refers  to  the 
two  sides  of  it.  He  calls  it  a  knowledge  "  which  may  be 
truly  termed  divine  in  respect  of  the  object,  and  natural 
in  respect  of  the  light."     Nature  is  not  to  be  supposed 


08  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

the  evil  principle,  and  abandoned  of  God :  rather  it  is  the 
garment  we  see  Him  by.  Placed  in  the  midst  of  beauty 
itself,  it  is  still  the  solemn  temple  most  majestical  in 
which  it  is  ours  to  bend  the  knee  in  awe,  ours  to  worship 
in  love.  So  it  is  that  we  shall  take  nothing  from  God 
in  commending  His  work.  Nature  has  a  life  of  its  own  ; 
it  is  not  simply  brute.  There  is  at  least  relevance  for 
the  "plastic  nature"  of  Cudworth,  or  even  the  world-soul 
of  Plato.  "We  may  exclaim  in  perfect  agreement  with 
Cornelius  Agrippa  ab  Nettesheim  :  "  Supremus  et  unicus 
rationis  actus  religio  est ; "  "  Religion  is  reason's  sole  and 
supreme  act ;  in  vain  we  philosophize,  know,  and  under- 
stand, if  He,  who  is  the  essence  and  author  of  our  intel- 
lect, and  whose  image  we  are,  is  left  unknown  by  us ; " 
but  we  may,  not  inconsistently,  at  the  same  time,  feign  or 
figure,  with  his  contemporary  Franeiscus  Georgius  Zorzi 
Venetus,  that  "  the  world  is  an  infinitely  living  indi- 
vidual, maintained  by  a  soul  in  the  power  of  God."  We 
may  even  allow  ourselves  to  sympathize  with  Zorzi's 
countrymen  who  came  later,  and  held  that  "  a  single  soul 
pervades  this  living  universe."  In  fact,  there  is  great 
truth  in  the  old  way  of  it,  that  the  world  is  the  macro- 
cosm of  man,  as  man  is  the  microcosm  of  the  world.  We 
may  conceive  that  it  has  been  the  will  of  God  that  nature 
should  be  the  mere  externalization  of  man,  as  that  man 
should  be  the  mere  internalization  of  nature.  The  cate- 
gories which  are  in  man  and  constitute  his  thinking  fur- 
niture — these  categories,  if  in  him  only  subjective  and 
within,  are  all  objective  and  without  in  nature.  Only  so 
it  is  that,  at  once,  nature  is  intelligible  and  man  intelli- 
gent The  relation,  indeed,  between  an  object  that  is  to 
be  understood,  and  a  subject  that  is  to  understand,  is  pre- 
cisely as  that  between  matter  and  form.  If  form  is  to 
take  on  matter,  matter  to  admit  into  itself  form,  form 
must  be  in  effect  matter,  matter  in  effect  form.      So  it  is 


EXTERNALITY  AND  INTEBNAUTT.  69 

that  nature  is  but  the  other  of  thought ;  thought,  again, 
but  the  other  of  nature.  In  other  words,  nature  is  but 
the  extermination  of  thought — thought  but  the  inter- 
nalization of  nature.  Or  nature  is  externality ;  thought 
is  internality.  Nature  is  the  externality  of  that  inter- 
nality ;  thought  is  the  internality  of  that  externality. 
Nature  is  difference ;  thought  is  identity :  the  one  the 
difference  of  that  identity ;  the  other  the  identity  of  that 
difference.  Nature,  as  the  object,  as  the  externality,  as 
the  difference,  is  a  boundless  out  and  out  of  objects,  a 
boundless  out  and  out  of  externalities,  a  boundless  out 
and  out  of  differences — a  boundless  out  and  out  under 
physical  necessity,  which,  at  the  same  time,  can  alone  be, 
and  is,  physical  contingency,  fortuitousness,  accident, 
chance.  Thought,  again,  as  the  subject,  the  internality, 
the  identity,  is  a  boundless  in  and  in  of  subjective  inter- 
nalities,  subjective  identities ;  and  its  actuating  principle 
is  freedom,  free  will ;  for  thought  as  thought,  reason  as 
reason,  the  universal  as  the  universal,  is  the  only  freedom, 
the  only  free  will.  "As  externality,"  says  Giordano 
Bruno  in  the  Delia  causa  principle-  cd  tmo,  "  As  exter- 
nality, nature  is  only  the  shadow  of  the  One,  of  the  first 
and  original  principle ;  for  what,  in  the  'principle,  is 
unseparated,  single,  and  one,  appears  in  externality 
— in  tilings — sundered,  complex,  and  multiplex."  The 
thought  here,  Bruno's  thought,  as  of  the  one  and 
the  many  in  the  language  of  the  Greeks,  is,  evidently, 
very  much  as  I  have  expressed  it  a  moment  ago. 
Thought  is  the  form,  and  the  truth,  and  the  universal — 
the  one:  nature  is  only  the  matter,  and  the  show,  and 
the  particular — the  many.  The  world  is  but  the  negative 
of  the  mind  ;  the  mind  is  the  affirmative  of  the  world. 
It  is  the  world  that  stands  up  a  presence,  and  the 
only  presence,  to  the  senses ;  but  it  is  mind  that  is 
the  soul  of  that  world.      No  man  has  seen  the  universal 


70  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

— it  is  only  the  particular  that  can  be  seen.  It  is  only 
the  objects  in  the  world  that  can  be  seen,  and  heard, 
and  handled.  Accordingly,  the  philosophers  of  a  sensa- 
tional time  will  only  speak  of  what  they  know,  they  say  ; 
and  they  know  only  the  particular — only  what  they  see. 
They  do  not  believe  there  is  a  universal :  a  universal  they 
never  saiv.  Nevertheless,  it  is  only  the  universal  that  is 
the  truth  of  the  particular:  the  particular  only  is  because 
the  universal  is.  What  the  particular  is,  that  is  the 
universal.  Or,  it  is  in  the  particular  that  we  are  to  see 
and  know  the  universal.  That  is  the  way  of  the  truth. 
As  there  cannot  be  a  naked  outside — an  outside  that 
has  no  inside,  so  there  cannot  be  a  naked  particular 
— a  particular  that  is  that  and  nothing  else — a  particular 
that  has  no  universal.  We  are,  all  of  us  that  are  here, 
particulars ;  I  wonder  what  any  of  us  would  be  if 
the  universal,  if  man,  humanity,  were  suddenly  allowed 
to  run  out  of  us  !  The  universal  is  not  a  single  object, 
a  thing  which  we  can  touch  and  handle ;  nevertheless 
it  is,  and  all  these  particulars  are  only  its  :  we  can  touch 
and  handle  them,  only  because  of  it.  If  it  is  only  seen 
in  them,  they  disappear  into  it.  Separate  existence  for 
the  universal  is  only  possible  in  the  absolute  subject, 
God.  And  His  is  the  necessary  existence.  He  is  that 
which  cannot  nut  be.  We  can  conceive  all — all  the 
things  of  sense — to  perish  ;  but  still  we  know  that  there 
is  God,  that  He  cannot  perish,  and  that  they  would  come 
again.  Extinguish  the  lamp  of  this  universe,  and  it  is 
still  alight.  Crush  all  into  nonentity,  and  it  only  smiles 
an  actuality  in  your  face.  At  the  same  time  that,  too, 
is  to  be  said  :  we  are.  We,  too,  think ;  we,  too,  are 
universals,  but,  being  in  a  particular  body  and  a  parti- 
cular world,  not  infinitely  so  :  we  are,  as  here  below, 
only  finitely  so.  Here,  however,  the  warning  is  necessary 
that,  even  in   the   position  that   would  give   to    nature 


SPINOZA.  7  1 

a  certain  life  of  its  own,  it  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be 
understood  that  it  is  Spinoza's  deification  of  nature  that 
is  meant.  I  am  not  one  of  those  who,  in  these  day-, 
apotheose  Spinoza,  though  I  can  very  sincerely  r< 
him.  lie  was  a  gentle,  inoffensive,  quietly  living  man, 
who,  for  bare  bread,  contentedly  sat  polishing  his  glasses 
while  lie  pondered  the  writings  of  Descartes,  and  Hobbes, 
and  others  the  like,  which  were  then  before  him.  For 
I  see  no  reason  to  believe  that  Moses  Maimonides,  or 
other  Jcicish  philosopher,  earlier  or  later,  had  such 
power  over  Spinoza  as  men  of  an  imagination  of  the 
Arabian  Nights  are  profuse  in  eloquence  to  lead  us  to 
believe.  Descartes,  with  a  little  of  Hobbes,  was,  after 
all,  quite  enough  for  Spinoza.  It  is  only  the  peculiarity 
of  its  presentation,  perhaps,  that  hides  the  milk  and 
water  in  the  system,  that,  for  the  rest,  belonged  to  the 
character  of  the  man.  It  might  not  be  very  difficult 
to  look  at  Descartes  geometrically  ;  ami  then,  for  the 
most  part,  the  thing  was  done — the  work  was  accom- 
plished. Generalized  to  its  ultimate,  what  was  in  rerum 
natura  was  extension  and  thought.  Space,  indeed,  was 
more  than  extension  :  it  was  solid  ;  it  was  extension  in 
all  directions.  Even  so,  however,  it  was  still  geometrical. 
But  take  it  as  extension  only,  then  its  surface  was 
susceptible  of  infinite  lineamentation,  infinite  con- 
figuration. But  infinite  configurate  lineamentation  in- 
volved  relations,  involved  ideas,  was  tantamount  to 
thought.  There,  then,  it  was;  that  was  the  world— 
extension  and  thought.  That  also  was  God:  extension, 
with  its  involution  of  thought,  geometrical  thought — 
that  was  God.  What,  then,  of  man  here  \  Why,  finite 
things  were  the  figurations,  the  lineamentations  <>f  ex- 
tension ;  and  one  of  these  was  man.  Even  at  the 
even  at  the  worst,  consequently,  man  did  occupy,  actually 
was,  a  certain  portion  of  the  divine  surface.      The  lines 


72  CIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

that    figured   him — the  lines  that  cut  him  out — might 
indeed    be    evanescent    and    perish;    but    what    of    the 
surface    they  isolated   remained.      To    that  extent  man 
was  as  God;  to  that  extent  man  was  divine;    to  that 
extent  man  was  immortal.     Surely,  at  all  events,  par- 
ticularly, while  quite  in  coherence  with  the  general  idea, 
that  is  the  burden  and  the  effect  of  propositions  22  and 
23  in  the  fifth  book  of  the  Ethic.     We  are  significantly 
warned  by  Erdmann,  however,  not   altogether  to    trust 
ourselves  to  any  such  concession  of  immortality  on  the 
part  of  Spinoza,  seeing  that,  if  in  such  propositions  we 
find  "  a  personal  God,  a  personal  immortality,  and  one 
knows  not  what  else,  we  must  not  forget  that,  according 
to  his  (Spinoza's)  own  express  declarations,  God  has  neither 
understanding  nor  will ;  that,  according   to  him,  a  God 
who  reciprocated  love  were  no  God ;  further,  that  to  him 
personality     and    duration    are    only    figments    of     the 
imagination,  which,  even  as  such,  he  will  not  eternalize ; 
finally,  that  he  makes  religion  and  blessedness  to  consist 
simply  in  the  self-forgetting  resignation  through  which 
man  becomes  only  an  instrument    of   God,   that,   when 
useless,    is    thrown     away    and    replaced     by    another." 
Evidently,  then,  on  such  foundations,  what  stuff,  what 
portion  of   the  very  substance  of  his  God,  Spinoza  will 
allow  us,  cannot  come  to  much,  though  applying  it  as, 
so  far,  a  concession  on  his  part  to  the  general  interest 
of   the   immortality  of  the   soul,  we   may  feel   inclined 
in   our  hearts  to  thank  him  at  least  for  his  good-will. 
But,  to    thank  him  so    is  not  to  accept  his   deification 
of    nature.       Nature,    as    that    immeasurable    panorama 
out  there,  around  us,  and  in   front  of  us,  give  it  what 
properties  we  may,  is  still  an  externality  and  a  materi- 
ality ;    it    is    not    a    spirit  ;    as    such    it    is    not    even 
tantamount  to  the  vovs  of  Anaxagoras.      To  attain  even 
to  the  vovs  of  Anaxagoras,  it  is  not  the  externality  and 


PHYSICAL  THEORIES.  i  6 

the  materiality  that  we  have  to  look  to,  but  what  is 
of  the  quality  of  thought — the  order,  beauty,  and  design- 
ful  contrivance  of  the  world.  The  remarkable  con- 
sideration is,  that  all  this  is  otherwise  precisely  in  these 
sensational  days  in  which  our  own  lot  has  fallen.  We 
are  enormously  in  advance  of  Anaxagoras  in  our  know- 
ledge of  the  sun  and  moon,  which,  he  said,  he  was  born 
to  speculate — in  our  knowledge  of  the  whole  heaven, 
to  which  he  pointed  as  his  country  ;  but  increase  of 
knowledge,  instead  of  guiding  and  directing  us,  like 
Anaxagoras,  more  and  more  to  mind,  seems  to  have 
completely  turned  us  round  to  matter.  The  stars  are 
matter,  and  the  sun,  and  moon,  and  planets  ;  neither 
is  it  a  principle  from  within  that  would  give  them 
union  and  society,  but  only  tether,  a  matter  from  with- 
out, that,  according  to  some,  shall  compress  them. 
Matter  here,  matter  there,  matter  everywhere.  Particles 
of  matter  that,  in  mechanical  rushing  to  their  clash, 
shall  take  fire,  and  flame  out  suns.  Particles  of  matter 
that,  in  inevitable  mechanical  swirl  and  sweep,  shall 
be  as  worlds  around  the  fires.  Worlds  and  fires,  for  all 
that,  which,  sooner  or  later,  shall  be  as  cold  and  useless 
as  the  spur  of  Percy.  Throw  the  spur  of  Percy  into 
space,  and  let  it  sink :  even  as  that  spur,  we  are  to 
follow  our  whole  universe  into  an  eternal  cold,  into 
an  eternal  dark,  into  an  eternal  wilderness.  Astronomy 
gives  us  no  hint  of  life.  Geology  gives  us  that  much — 
geology  does  indeed  tell  of  life  ;  but  geology  is  powerless 
to  save  us.  Geology  transports  weathering  into  the  sea, 
and  is  the  while,  almost  even  in  the  single  word,  the  epic 
of  the  elements,  piped  by  the  winds,  in  flash  of  the  sun, 
to  the  dash  of  the  rain;  but  geology  can  only  join 
astronomy  in  the  end,  and  speak  our  doom.  Spare  is  to 
be  an  infinite  tomb:  over  that  tomb  time  shall  be  an 
infinite  pall.     Existence  may  have  been — a  bubble,  that 


74  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

no  sooner  was  than  it  burst,  but  what  properly  is,  what 
truly  is,  are  in  everlasting  silence,  in  everlasting  cold, 
in  the  everlasting  dark — two  dead  corpses,  two  dead 
infinitudes,  the  corpse  and  the  infinitude  of  space,  the 
corpse  and  the  infinitude  of  time.  But  what  are  space 
and  Lime  themselves  ?  If  they  are  the  infinitudes,  if 
they  are  the  eternities,  perhaps  it  is  precisely  in  them 
that  we  shall  find  some  light.  And  shapes,  more  am- 
biguous and  equivocal  than  time  and  space  are,  it  is 
impossible  to  conceive — at  once  the  mockingest  of 
shadows  and  the  toughest  of  stuffs — now  described  as 
the  very  warp  and  woof  on  which  the  universe  is 
stretched,  and  now  as  the  most  unsubstantial  playthings 
of  dream.  To  one,  Mr.  Hodgson,  they  are  "  immediately 
and  ineradicably  certain,"  the  basis  of  cognition,  the 
"  corner-stone  of  philosophy  ;  "  to  another,  Carlyle,  they 
are  but  the  two  "  world  -enveloping  appearances,"  the 
"  canvass "  for  all  other  "  minor  illusions,"  if  there  to 
"  clothe  "  us,  there  also  to  "  blind  "  us,  as  it  is  into  their 
quality  all  that  is  resolves.  Berkeley  (WW.  iv.  468), 
to  whom  this  "  world  without  thought  is  nee  quid,  nee 
quantum,  nee  quale"  declares  "  time  a  sensation,  and 
therefore  only  in  the  mind  ;  space  a  sensation,  and 
therefore  not  without  the  mind ; "  while,  even  to  the 
sober,  sensible,  and  somewhat  prosaic  Dr.  Beid  (WW. 
324,  343),  space,  looming  up  there  "  an  immense, 
eternal,  immovable,  and  indestructible  void  or  emptiness," 
is  "  potentially  only,  not  actually,"  and  time  is  "  a  dark 
and  difficult  object,"  "  a  beginning  in  which  is  only  a 
contradiction."  The  monadology  of  Leibnitz,  as  is  easy 
to  know,  could  give  no  authority  to  the  perception  of 
sense,  and  no  external  reality  to  the  forms  of  space  and 
time,  which  in  some  way  only  resulted  to  us  from  our 
perception  of  the  interaction  among  things.  All  the 
early  writings  of  Kant,  those,  namely,  that  preceded  the 


SrACE  AND  TIME. 


75 


Dissertatio  de  mundi  sensibilis  atque  intelligibUis  form"  1 1 
principiis,  which  did  itself  precede  and  usher  in  the 
Kritik  of  Pure  Reason — in  almost  every  one  of  these 
early  writings,  there  is  such  mention  of  time  and  space 
as  proves  the  great  interest  of  Kant,  from  the  very  first, 
in  their  regard. 

As    is    only  to    be  expected,  Kant  is  seen  in    these 
writings   to   he   for  long  in   respect  of   time  and  space 
a  follower  of  Leibnitz.      In  his  Gedanken  von  der  wahren 
Schatzung  der  lebendigen  Krafte,  for   example,  he   holds 
that  "  there    would    be    no  space   and    no  extension,  if 
things  had  not  a  power  to  act  out  of  themselves  ;  for 
otherwise   there    would    be   no   connection,   while    with- 
out   connection    there  would     be    no    order,   and     with- 
out  order   no   space."      He   even  goes    on    to   say,   "  It 
is  probable  that  the    three  dimensions  of    space  derive 
from   the   law   of    the   interaction    of    substances;     and 
substances   interact   so    that    the    force   of    their    action 
is   inversely    as    the    square   of   their  distances."       And. 
eight  or  nine  years  later,  we   have  the  same  doctrine. 
in  his   Nova  dilucidatio  principiorum  primorum    cogni- 
tionis  metaphysics,  as  where  he  says :  nexu  substantia  runt 
abolito,    successio    et    tempus   paritcr  faccssv.nt   (the  con- 
nection of   substances  being  withdrawn,  succession  and 
time    are    equally    withdrawn).       In     his     Monadologia 
physica,   about    the   same  time,    he    characterizes    space 
as    substantialitatis   plane    coopers,    as    plainly   devoid    of 
substantiality,  and  as  but  the  phaenomenon,  the  appear- 
ance or   show,  of  "  the   external  relation   of  the  monads 
in    union."     What   is  remarkable,   however,   is    that    in 
1768,  writing  his  brief    paper,  Vom  crstcn   Grande  des 
Unterschiedes  der   Gegenden   im   Fuiivnic,   he,  as    it    were, 
turns    his    back  upon   himself,    and    attempts   to    prove 
cogently,  and  with  conviction,  that  space   is  an  absolute 
reality   and    no    mere    Gedankending — that    is    remark- 


76  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

able;  but  it  is  more  remarkable  still  that,  in  1770, 
only  a  further  two  years,  we  find  the  dissertation  "  con- 
cerning the  form  and  principles  of  the  sensible  and 
intelligible  world,"  in  large  part,  written  to  prove  space 
a  mere  subjective  appendicle  of  sense  as  sense.  This 
is  Kant's  last  position  relatively,  and  in  the  sequel  he 
never  varies  from  it.  Still  there  are  in  the  writings 
of  the  different  dates,  the  vacillation  on  the  part  of 
Kant,  and  the  contradiction  in  question.  What  con- 
cerns us,  however,  is  the  fact  that  Kant  did  decide 
in  the  end  both  space  and  time  to  be  but  forms  of 
our  own  sensory  within  us,  into  which  perceptively 
received,  disposed,  and  arranged  by  aid  of  the  categories 
and  their  schemata,  the  contributions  of  our  special 
senses  stood  up  and  out  at  length,  apart  from  us,  as 
though  an  infinite  universe  around  us  and  inhabited 
by  us. 

These,  then,  are  great  authorities  ;  and  there  seems  that 
even  in  space  and  time  (on  every  supposition),  which 
would  call  a  halt  to  the  conclusions  of  the  sensationists. 
But,  unfortunately,  we  cannot  expect  every  one  to  be 
at  home  with  the  subtleties  of  metaphysic,  or  with 
what  may  appear  the  mere  dreams  of  philosophy. 
One  would  like,  so  far  as,  in  some  respects,  it  seems 
hostile  and  obstructive  to  the  interests  of  Natural 
Theology — one  would  like  to  approach  science  in  that 
regard,  on  its  own  grounds,  and  to  enter  into  it  on 
its  own  terms.  Suppose  we  leave  aside  all  questions 
of  a  beginning,  and  equally  all  questions  of  an  end. 
Suppose  we  take  the  world  even  as  we  see  it,  or  rather 
even  as  astronomical  science  sees  it  at  this  very  moment. 
Well — there  is  the  sun  by  day ;  and  there  is  the 
spectacle  of  the  heavens  by  night.  What  does  astro- 
nomy say  of  all  that,  not  as  it  conceives  it  to  have 
begun,   and   not  as  it  conceives  it  to  be  predestinated 


THE  WOELD,  BUT  FOR  EYE  AND  EAR.  77 

to  end,  but  simply  as  it  is.  And  as  it  is,  it  was  seen 
in  his  prime  by  Anaxagoras,  more  than  two  thousand 
three  hundred  years  ago.  That  is  a  long  time  in  the 
life  of  man ;  but,  in  the  life  of  the  universe,  it  would 
seem,  so  far  as  difference  is  concerned,  simply  to  drop 
out.  The  sun  and  the  moon  that  we  see  now  from 
the  streets  of  Edinburgh,  Anaxagoras  saw  then  from 
the  streets  of  Athens.  Our  Sirius  was,  for  Anaxasraras, 
his  Sirius  too ;  and  so  it  was  with  the  Hyades  and 
the  Pleiades,  and  Castor  and  Pollux,  and  the  Milky 
Way  as  well.  "What  lie  saw  led  him,  the  only  sober 
man  among  mere  inebriates,  according  to  Aristotle,  to 
speak  of  an  order  and  a  beauty  that  could  be  due  to 
intelligence  only.  Almost  in  our  own  days,  the 
experience  of  Anaxagoras  was  precisely  that  of  Kant. 
The  starry  heaven  above  him  was  one  of  the  only 
two  things  that  filled  his  soul  with  ever  new  and 
increasing  wonder  and  veneration  the  more  and  the 
oftener  he  reflected.  "  In  effect,"  he  says  again,  "  when 
our  spirit  is  filled  with  such  reflections,  the  aspect 
of  the  starry  heavens  on  a  clear  night,  awTakens  in 
us  a  joy  which  only  noble  souls  are  capable  of  feel- 
ing ;  in  the  universal  calm  of  nature,  and  in  the 
peace  of  sense,  the  hidden  faculty  of  the  immortal 
soul  speaks  to  us  indescribably,  and  breathes  into 
us  mysterious  thoughts,  which  ma}'  be  felt,  but  not 
possibly  named."  There,  then,  it  is,  that  starry  heaven 
— there — in  infinite  space  above  us,  globe  upon  globe, 
in  their  own  light  and  in  the  light  of  each  oilier. 
all  wheeling,  wheeling  in  and  out,  and  round  and 
round,  and  through  each  other,  in  a  tangle  of  motion 
that  has  still  a  law,  not  without  explosions  in  this 
one  and  the  other  from  within,  doubtless,  that  would 
sound  to  us,  did  we  hear  them,  louder,  dreader,  more 
awfully   terrific   than   any   thunder  of   the   tropics,    that 


78  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTH. 

would  sound  to  us,  did  we  hear  them,  veritably  as 
the  crack  of  doom — well,  just  to  think  it,  all  that  is 
taking  place,  all  that  is  going  on,  all  these  globes 
are  whirling  in  a  darkness  blacker  than  the  mouth  of 
wolf,  deeper  than  in  the  deepest  pit  that  ever  man 
has  sunk, — all  that  is  going  on,  all  that  is  taking 
place  in  a  darkness  absolute ;  and  more,  all  that  is 
going  on,  all  that  is  taking  place  —  for  exploding 
globes  even — in  a  silence  absolute,  in  a  silence  dead, 
in  a  silence  that  never  a  whisper — never  the  faintest 
whisper,  never  the  most  momentary  echo  breaks !  Is 
not  that  extraordinary  ?  but  it  is  no  less  true  than 
extraordinary.  Undulations  there  are,  doubtless,  that 
are  light  to  its;  but  no  undulation  will  give  light  to 
them,  the  globes.  Vibrations  there  are,  doubtless,  where 
there  is  air,  that  are  sound  to  us ;  but  all  vibrations 
are  as  the  dead  to  them.  It  is  in  a  cave,  in  a  den, 
blacker  than  the  blackest  night,  soundless  and  more  silent 
than  the  void  of  voids,  that  all  those  intermingling  motions 
of  the  globes  go  on — but  for  us,  that  is  ;  but  for  an  eye 
and  an  ear,  and  a  soul  behind  them !  That  cannot  be 
denied.  The  deepest  astronomical  philosopher,  en- 
tranced in  what  he  sees,  entranced  in  what  he  fancies 
himself  to  hear,  must  confess  that,  but  for  himself 
and  the  few  and  feeble  others  that  are  like  himself, 
all  would  be  as  dark  as  Erebus,  all  would  be  as 
silent  as  the  grave.  But  as  the  hour  now  is,  you 
will  allow  me  to  bring  this  home — you  will  allow  me  to 
point  the  lesson  in  a  future  lecture. 


GIFFOIU)  LECTUEE  THE  FIFTH. 

Astronomy,  space,  time,  the  vovg — Kant,  Fichte,  Sclielling — Carlylo, 
the  Sartor  —  Emerson  —  Plato — Aristotle — A  beginning—  The 
want  of  eye  and  ear  again — Deafness  and  blindness  together — 
Design  restored—  Thomson—Diogenes  of  Apollonia — Socrates — 
Meteorology  and  practical  action — Morality  and  ethicality — 
The  first  teleological  argument — Proofs  of  design — Bacon — 
Socrates  finally. 

We  resume  where  we  left  off  at  our  last  meeting.  The 
universal  conclusions,  we  may  say,  of  every  writing  on 
astronomical  science  which  we  may  chance  to  take  up 
now-a-days,  in  regard  to  the  eventual  entombment  of  the 
whole  present  system  of  things  as  a  single  cold  corpse  in 
a  perpetual  grave  of  space,  under  a  perpetual  pall  of  time 
— these  conclusions  brought  us,  at  the  close  of  our  last 
lecture,  to  some  consideration,  firstly,  of  space  and  time 
themselves,  and  then,  secondly,  of  the  heavens  above  us, 
at  once  as,  to  astronomical  observation,  they  presently 
are,  and,  historically,  always  have  been.  We  have  still 
to  bring  home  what  was  said  then  ;  and  here  it  may  be 
perhaps  well,  indeed,  not  to  expand,  but  just  a  little  to 
open  statements.  The  subject,  certainly,  has  fairly  come 
to  us  in  connection  with  the  assertion  of  the  presence  of 
vovs,  intelligence,  in  the  general  system  around  us — an 
assertion  which  such  a  science  as  this  of  Natural  Theo- 
logy, with  peril  of  its  very  life,  requires  to  make  good ; 
at  the  same  time  that,  obviously,  on  the  contrary  sup- 
position, with  such  an  eternity  of  night  and  the  grave 
before  us  as  astronomy  predicts,  it  would  be  just  as  well 


80  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

to  say  as  little  as  possible,  whether  of  the  vov$  of 
Anaxagoras,  or  of  the  Natural  Theology  of  anybody  else. 
In  regard  to  time  and  space,  we  had  strong  evidence  of 
their  very  peculiar  nature  on  many  hands,  even  on  the 
part  of  Reid,  at  once  the  sworn  foe  of  idealism,  and 
equally  the  sworn  friend  of  common  sense.  After  vacilla- 
tion, Kant's  final  opinion  was  such  as  we  find  expressed 
in  these  words  of  his  own  (Text-Book  to  K.  p.  157): 
"  Were  our  subject  abstracted  from,  or  simply  the  sub- 
jective constitution  of  our  senses,  all  the  qualities  and  all 
the  relations  of  objects  in  s>pace  and  time — nay,  space 
and  time  themselves — would  disappear  :  for  all  these  are, 
as  mere  appearances  to  sense,  incapable  of  existing  in 
themselves,  but  only  in  us."  And  if  such  was  the 
doctrine  of  Kant,  it  cannot  be  said,  on  the  whole,  that 
his  immediate  successors  differed  from  it  at  least  as 
regards  the  general  ideal  quality  of  space  and  time. 
Fichte,  for  example,  laboriously  deduces,  in  his  dialectical 
manner,  the  construction  and  setting  out  of  time  and 
space  in  the  imagination.  Schelling,  again,  while  simply 
taking  his  material  from  the  hands  of  Fichte,  and  as 
Fichte  himself  gave  it  him,  remained,  all  through  his  life, 
sufficiently  an  idealist  to  believe  in  the  ideality  of  space 
and  time.  In  a  writing,  dated  1804  (vi.  223),  he  will 
be  found  saying,  '•'  Space,  purely  as  such,  is,  even  for  the 
geometrician,  nothing  real;"  and  again,  "independently 
of  the  particular  things,  space  is  nothing."  In  his 
Transcendental  Idealism  of  1800,  which,  however,  is 
little  more  than  a  rdchauffe  of  Fichte's  Wisscnschaftslehre, 
he  had  already  said  (iii.  470) :  "  Time  is  only  inner  sense 
becoming  to  its  own  self  object;  space  is  outer  sense 
becoming  object  to  inner  sense." 

We  referred  then  to  the  same  belief  on  the  part  of 
Carlyle.  In  that  magnificent  chapter  of  the  Sartor  Resartus 
which  bears  the  title  of  "  Xatural  Supernaturalism,"  he 


CARLYLE,  THE  SARTOR.  81 

will  be  found,  on  a  considerable  canvass,  to  speak  both  fully 
and  grandly  on  this  special  topic.  Carlyle  himself  calls  this 
section  of  his  work  a  "  stupendous  section ; "  and  it  is  a 
stupendous  section, — I  suppose  the  very  first  word  of  a 
higher  philosophy  that  had  been  as  yet  spoken  in  Great 
Britain, — I  suppose  the  very  first  English  word  towards 
the  restoration  and  rehabilitation  of  the  dethroned  upper 
powers,  which,  for  all  that,  I  fear,  under  our  present 
profound  views  in  religion  and  philosophy,  remain  still 
dethroned.  Here  it  is,  as  the  words  are,  that  the 
"  professor  first  becomes  a  seer."  Hitherto  he  has  been 
struggling  with  all  manner  of  "  phantasms,"  "  super- 
annuated symbols,  and  what  not ; "  but  now  he  has 
"  looked  fixedly  on  existence,  till,  one  after  the  other,  its 
earthly  hulls  and  garnitures,"  time  and  space  themselves, 
"  have  all  melted  away,"  and  to  "  his  rapt  vision,  the 
celestial  Holy  of  Holies  lies  at  last  disclosed."  As 
intimated,  it  is  especially  the  stripping  off  of  these  two 
"  world-enveloping  phantasms,"  space  and  time,  that  has 
enabled  him  to  attain  to  such  grand  consummation  and 
blissful  fruition.  The  "deepest  of  all  illusory  appear- 
ances," he  exclaims,  they  are  "  for  hiding  wonder,"  the 
wonder  of  this  universe.  They  hide  what  is  past  and 
they  hide  what  is  to  come  ;  but  yet,  as  he  exclaims  again, 
"  Yesterday  and  to-morrow  both '  are  : "  "  with  God  as  it 
is  a  universal  here,  so  is  it  an  everlasting  now."  As 
Carlyle  himself  says,  it  is  in  this  chapter  that  he  attains 
to  "  Transcendentalism,"  and  to  a  sight  at  last  of  "  the 
promised  land,  where  Palingenesia,  in  all  senses,  may  be 
considered  as  beginning."  And  certainly,  as  I  say, 
Sartor  Resartus  itself  was  a  first  attempt  to  reconstruct 
and  revindicate  those  substantial  truths  of  existence, 
which  are  the  enduring,  firm,  fast,  fixed,  ineradicable 
foundations  of  humanity  as  humanity, — humanity  in  the 
individual,  humanity  in  the  kind. 

F 


82  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

However  much  the  general  testimony  of  Emerson  be  in 
this  vein  of  Carlyle,  it  is  not  in  my  recollection  that  I  can 
quote  him  specially  in  regard  to  time  and  space.  He  does 
say  in  that  reference,  "  Therefore  is  Space,  and  therefore 
Time,  that  man  may  know  that  things  are  not  huddled  and 
lumped,  but  sundered  and  individual : "  that  is,  time  and 
space  are  there  for  "  the  perception  of  differences  ; "  but 
they  must  disappear,  as  beams  and  joists  of  the  mere  out- 
ward, into  his  general  idealism.  Emerson  regards  "  nature 
as  a  phenomenon,  not  a  substance."  He  attributes 
"  necessary  existence  to  spirit,"  but  esteems  nature  only 
"  as  an  accident  and  an  effect."  He  says  once,  "  Even  the 
materialist  Condillac,  perhaps  the  most  logical  expounder 
of  materialism,  was  constrained  to  say,  '  Though  we 
should  soar  into  the  heavens,  though  we  should  sink  into 
the  abyss,  we  never  go  out  of  ourselves ;  it  is  always  our 
own  thought  that  we  perceive.'  "  The  quotation  in  itself 
is  excellent ;  but  it  is  strange  that  Emerson  should 
attribute  to  Condillac,  what  is  so  prominent  in  David 
Hume;  not  but  that  Condillac  may  have  paraphrased 
Hume,  whom  Emerson,  like  most  students  of  his  day, 
under  the  influence  of  Coleridge  possibly,  openly  de- 
preciated and  disparaged.  It  is  a  later  series  of  Kantian 
studies  that  has  brought  up  Hume  again.  Emerson  is 
probably  happier  when  he  attributes  to  a  French  philo- 
sopher the  saying  that  "  material  objects  are  necessarily 
kinds  of  scoriae  of  the  substantial  thoughts  of  the 
Creator."  It  is  Emerson  himself  who  says,  and  it  is  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  things  that  ever  lias  been  said, 
"  Infancy  is  the  perpetual  Messiah,  which  comes  into  the 
arms  of  fallen  men,  and  pleads  with  them  to  return  to 
paradise." 

Before  leaving  the  consideration  that  wTe  have  here,  it 
may  be  pointed  out  that  there  are  views  in  Plato  and 
Aristotle  relatively,  which  are  not  essentially  different. 


PLATO ARISTOTLE.  8  3 

Apart  from  the  general  philosophy  of  Plato,  there  is  a 
reference  to  Time  in  the  Timacus  (37  E-38  A)  which  is 
manifestly  of  an  ideal  import.  The  parts  of  time  there, 
the  was  and  the  will  be,  are  called  but  phenomenal  forms, 
which  we  wrongly  transfer  to  what  is  noumenally  eternal ; 
"  for  we  say,  in  a  time  reference  namely,  it  was,  it  is,  it 
will  be ;  whereas  of  what  truly  is,  we  can  only  say  it  is." 
As  regards  Aristotle  again,  what  he  has  to  say  in  this 
connection  would  of  itself  constitute  an  excellent  in- 
troduction to  metaphysic  proper,  for  it  is  full  of  the 
subtlest  turns  possible,  and  requires  the  intellect  that 
would  follow  them  to  have  sharpened  itself,  at  least  for 
the  nonce,  to  the  fineness  of  a  razor.  The  mention  of 
one  or  two  of  them,  however,  must  here  suffice.  As 
regards  space,  for  example,  it  is  enough  to  point  out  that 
to  Aristotle  it  cannot  demand  for  itself  a  place,  so  to 
speak,  whether  in  heaven  or  in  hell.  Of  the  two  known 
elements,  that  is,  it  is  without  a  claim  upon  either.  It 
cannot  pretend  to  mind  or  soul ;  for  its  extension  excludes 
it :  and  just  as  little  can  it  profess  itself  corporeal ;  for  it 
has  got  no  body.  The  prestidigitation,  or  jugglery,  that 
time  exacts,  is  subtler  and  more  irritating  still.  All 
other  things,  for  example,  consist  of  parts  that  are;  and, 
on  that  necessity,  time  itself  cannot  be,  for,  in  view  of 
the  past  and  the  future,  it  consists  of  parts  that  are  not. 
But  leaving  all  such  finenesses  aside,  we  may  limit  our- 
selves to  the  distinct  avowal  on  Aristotle's  part,  in  the 
last  chapter  of  the  fourth  book  of  the  Physics,  that,  as  to 
how  time  is,  when  viewed  in  reference  to  a  mind,  "  one 
might  doubt  whether,  if  there  were  no  mind,  time  would 
be  or  would  not  be." 

Now,  the  purpose  of  all  this  that  concerns  time  and 
space  is  to  suggest  that  the  constitution  of  them  may  be 
somewhat  in  the  way  of  the  constitution  of  a  universal 
beginning  or  a  universal  end,  as  postulated  by  science. 


84  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

Till  the  world  began,  there  was,  conceivably,  neither 
time  nor  space ;  and  when  the  world  ends,  it  is  equally 
conceivable  that  neither  will  remain.  In  short,  ideal 
considerations  must  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  all  such 
materialistic  conclusions  as,  excluding  vovs,  intelligence, 
from  any  role,  part,  place,  or  share  in  the  composition  of 
the  universe,  would  summarily  truncate  all  pretensions  of 
a  so-called  Natural  Theology,  and  concisely  close  this 
lecturer's  vocation. 

But  now,  again,  what  was  all  that  about  black  wolves' 
throats,  and  palls,  and  graves,  and  Erebus',  and  what 
not  ?  How  is  that  to  be  brought  home  to  us,  and  what 
is  the  lesson  that  is  to  be  pointed  ?  Well,  in  a  word,  all 
that  is  just  this : — kill  us  all  off,  and  the  likes  of  us, 
wherever  to  be  found — kill  us  all  off  in  the  universe,  I 
say,  and  from  that  moment  all  is  dark,  and  all  is  silent 
as  the  grave.  The  in  and  out,  and  round  about,  of  all 
the  stars  in  the  firmament,  of  Arcturus  and  Aldebaran,  of 
Vega,  Spica,  and  Capella,  of  Alamak,  Alpharat,  and  Scheat, 
of  Ophiuchus  and  Fomalhaut,  and  every  myriad  spark 
and  sparkle  in  the  Milky  Way  may  go  on  ceaselessly  still, 
by  day,  by  night,  but  henceforth  in  a  silence  absolute — 
in  a  darkness  dense,  impenetrable.  That,  let  move  what 
move  may ;  that,  indeed,  will  be  all — a  solid  soundless- 
ness,  a  substantial  black  !  What,  you  will  say,  will  there 
not  be  Charles's  Wain  still  circling  in  the  north,  and 
Cassiopeia's  Chair,  like  a  swarm  of  busy  bees,  and  the 
glorious  constellation  of  Orion,  with  his  grand  belt  of 
three,  and  in  his  surpassing  brightness  Sirius,  and  the 
Pleiades  in  their  pallor  ?  Or  simply,  as  regards  this 
earth  of  ours,  do  you  mean  to  say  that  the  thunder  will 
no  longer  roll  nor  the  lightning  flash — or  just  to  reduce 
and  confine  it  to  a  single  point,  do  you  mean  to  say  that, 
though  there  were  not  a  single  life  in  the  whole  solar 
system,  the  sun  would  not  continue  to  shine  ?    Well,  now 


THE  WANT  OF  EYE  AND  EAR.  85 

that  is  just  what  I  do  mean  to  say.     But  for  a  living  eye, 
but  for  a  living  ear.  there  would  be  no  light  in  the  sun. 
no  voice  in  the  thunder.      Vibration  in  the  air,  caused  by 
whatever  it  may,  is  sound  in  the  ear;  but  the  vibration 
itself    is    soundless,    it   is  but   a   mechanical  tremble,   a 
mechanical  quiver ;    alone  and  by  itself  it  is  in  silence 
only,  there  is  not  the  very  suggestion  of  a  tone  or  a  note 
in  it.      So  it  is  with  light.     Similar  to  the  vibrations  of 
the  air  there  are  the  undulations  of  the  aether.     These 
undulations  are  light  in   the  eye,  but  in   themselves — 
alone    and    by   themselves  —  they    are  darkness    itself. 
Without  an  eye  and  without  an  ear  all  those  globes  in 
the  heaven    around    us    career    among  themselves    in   a 
single  unbroken  black  that  has  not  a  sound  in  it.      The 
darkness  is  still  in  its  size  monstrous,  it  is  still  equal  to 
the  infinitude  of  space.      But,  all  dark,  does  it  not  seem 
to  lose  its  proportions  and  to  contract  somehow  ?     What 
are   all    these   enormous   differences    in   that   one  dark  \ 
Let  them  be  as  they  may,  they  are  all,  as  it  were,  within 
the  hollow  of  a  single  den.     But  if  these  great  globes  are 
only  to  wheel  and  wheel,  and  circle  and  circle,  in  a  single 
silent  den,  why  should  they  be  so  huge — why  should  they 
be  at  such  vast  distances  ?     Let  them  draw  nearer  each 
other,  let  them  shrink  in  themselves :  still,  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  there  is  scarce  a  change,  all  every  where  to 
our  minds  remains  pretty  much  the  same.      Quantity  is 
but    relative;    there   is    no  absolute   large,    there   is   no 
absolute  small.     The  earth,  possibly,  is  but  as  a  pea  to 
Sirius  ;  Sirius,  possibly,  but  as  a  pin's  point  to  the  Magellan 
clouds.     After  all,  the  mighty  black  of  space  is  no  more 
than  an  indefinite  cave — a  den — no  more  than  as  a  black- 
hole  of  Calcutta.      It  is  as  though  it  were  in  a  black 
hole  of   Calcutta  that,  without  an  eye,  all  the  operation^ 
of  the  firmament  proceed.       Quantity  has  pruned  itself, 
quantity  has  retrenched  its  idle,  useless  dimensions — very 


86  GIFFORD  lecture  the  fifth. 

idle,  very  useless  if  in  a  single,  soundless  dark ;  quantity 
has  retired  into  a  black  hole  of  Calcutta,  but  if  into  a 
black  hole  of  Calcutta,  why  not  into  the  butt  of  a  mantua- 
maker's  thimble  ?  There  !  that  is  the  result !  Without 
an  eye  to  see,  and  without  an  ear  to  hear,  the  world, 
whether  for  magnitude  or  for  use,  were  no  worse  or 
better,  did  it  compress  the  operation  of  its  dimensions 
from  the  infinitude  of  space  into  the  butt  of  a  mantua- 
maker's  thimble !  I  have  actually  seen  the  world  almost 
so  compressed.  Years  ago,  at  a  Welsh  ironwork,  I  found 
a  man,  a  fireman,  who,  from  some  injury  in  the  course  of 
his  occupation,  had  incurred  an  inflammation  that  cost 
him  not  only  the  sight  of  both  his  eyes,  but  even,  by  its 
extension,  the  hearing  of  both  his  ears.  He  was  still  in 
the  vigour  of  life.  He  might  have  been  yoked,  like  a 
beast  of  burden,  to  some  mechanical  appliance ;  but 
otherwise  he  was  useless.  He  was  left  (with  a  small 
pension,  I  fancy)  to  some  poor  people  who  took  care  of 
him.  Henceforth,  for  the  poor  fellow,  there  was  only  a 
life  of  dream.  Night  and  day,  day  and  night,  he  lay 
warm  in  his  bed,  shut  up,  like  a  cat  before  the  fire,  into 
the  bliss  of  subjectivity,  bare  subjectivity — so  to  speak, 
brute  subjectivity,  physical,  corporeal  subjectivity.  He 
rose  only  when  his  smell  told  him  that  his  meals  were 
ready.  The  senses  of  smell  and  taste  he  enjoyed, 
evidently,  with  the  intensest  avidity ;  but  still  there  was 
one  pleasure  which,  during  his  meals,  he  seemed  to  enjoy 
more  than  the  pleasures  of  either  of  these.  It  was  a 
pleasure  of  touch ;  but  it  was  a  human  pleasure.  His 
poor  face  wore  a  smile,  a  sweet  smile,  a  smile  of  our 
common  reason,  as  he  fed  the  cat  that  rubbed  on  his  legs 
only,  knowing  the  uselessness  of  a  mew  !  Now  to  that 
man  the  world  was  contracted  into  a  silent  dark,  where 
his  meals  were,  and  the  cat  that  rubbed  on  his  legs. 
What,  then,  would  the  world  be  were  all  mankind  as  he  ? 


DESIGN  RESTORED THOMSON.  87 

What  would  the  world  be  were  there  no  such  things  as 
an  eye  and  an  ear  within  the  immeasurable  vast  of  its 
entire  infinitude  ?  So  far  as  any  use  or  purpose  is  con- 
cerned, would  it  be  any  bigger  or  better  than  a  black  hole 
of  Calcutta, — would  it  be  any  bigger  or  better  than  the 
butt  of  a  mantua-maker's  thimble?  To  any  one  who 
will  approach  to  look,  an  eye,  an  ear  is  as  much  a 
necessity  in  the  realization,  is  as  much  involved  in  the 
very  plan,  of  the  universe,  as  matter  and  molecules,  and 
the  immensity  of  space  itself.  But  the  moment  we  see 
that,  we  see  design  also.  We  see  that  intelligence  has 
gone  to  the  composition  of  the  universe.  We  have  come 
to  be  sober,  like  Anaxagoras,  in  the  midst  of  inebriates, 
and,  like  him,  we  proclaim  the  vovs.  There  is,  then,  a 
reality  in  our  science  of  Natural  Theology,  and  we  can 
still  exclaim  with  the  poet  of  the  Seasons: — 

"  These,  as  they  change,  Almighty  Father,  these 
Are  hut  the  varied  God.     The  rolling  year 
Is  full  of  Thee.     Forth  in  the  pleasing  spring 
Thy  heauty  walks.  .  .  . 

Then  comes  the  glory  in  the  summer  months.  .  .  . 
Thy  bounty  shines  in  autumn  unconfined.  .  .  . 
In  winter,  awful  Thou  !  with  clouds  and  storms, 
Majestic  darkness  ! 

Mysterious  round  !   what  skill,  what  force  divine, 
Deep-felt,  in  all  appear  ! " 

For  our  purpose  of  Natural  Theology,  it  is  Diogenes 
of  Apollonia  that  offers  himself  next  to  our  consideration  ; 
but  I  leave  what  I  have  on  him  aside,  and  pass  at  once 
to  Socrates. 

The  position  of  Socrates  on  the  historical  roll,  as  well 
of  civilisation  as  of  philosophy,  is,  like  that  of  Anaxagoras, 
a  sole  and  singular  one.  If  Anaxagoras  introduced  the 
consideration  of  purpose  in  an  intellectual  regard,  it  was 
Socrates   that  turned    the   attention  of   mankind  to   the 


88  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

same  principle  in  practical  application.     It  was  with  him 
as    though   he   had   said,   Anaxagoras   cannot   apply  his 
principle  meteorologically — in  the  heavens,  that  is  ;  he  has 
only  announced  it  meteorologically;  neither  can  I  apply 
it   meteorologically,  but   let   us   see   whether   it  has  an 
application  or  not  to  human  life.      I  do  not  know  that 
there  is  anything  to  be  got  from  the  trees  and  the  fields, 
•  but  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  got  from  the  market-place, 
and  the  gymnasia,  and  the  people  in  them.     Accordingly, 
what    new    principle    Socrates    introduced   was    that   of 
morality.       By  this  word,  however,  there   is   something 
else  and  more  to  be  understood  than  it  usually  suggests. 
As  far  as  that  goes,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  indeed,  that  there 
was  morality  upon   the  earth,  that  there   was  morality 
in  mankind,  that  there  was  morality  among  the  Greeks, 
before  even   Socrates  appeared  among    them.      The  old 
Die-hards  of  the  Medic  wars,  to  say  nothiug  of    those 
of  times  yet  earlier,  old  Trojans  say,  were    surely    not 
without  morality.      The    distinction    is    this.      The    old 
morality,  the  old  virtue,  was  an  unconscious  morality,  an 
unconscious  virtue.       These  men  of  old  only  did  what 
they  did.     They  did  what  they  did  without  a  thought  of 
themselves.       They  thought,   indeed,   and   they   thought 
well ;   but  their  thoughts  were  not  properly  conscious  or 
self-conscious  thoughts.      Their  thoughts  were  instinctive, 
natural,  as  the  blood  in  their  veins,  as  the  breath  they 
drew,  as  the  food  they  ate.     They  made,  in  a  way,  no 
merit  to  themselves  of  what  they  did.     What  they  did, 
and  why,  was  but  as  the  institutions  of  their  country, 
was  but  part  and  parcel  of  their  streets  and  houses,  was 
but  as  the  common  voice,  the  common  sound,  the  common 
hum  of  the  agora.     They  and  the  State  were  not  different 
individuals,  they  and  the  State  were  one.     Their  life  was, 
as  it  were,  foetal  as  yet,  foetal  in  the  State,  their  mother, 
and  there  was  the  common  circulation  still  between  them: 


SOCRATES.  89 

the  medium  of  thai  circulation  was  the  laws  familiar  to 
them,  the  beliefs  they  all  believed,  the  patrimonial  use 
and  wont,  and  established  manners,  bo  to  speak,  naiured 
in  them.     If  we  can  so  name  the  distinction,  morality 

was   then  ethicality.      Both  are  right    doing,   but   ethi- 

cality  is   the  right  doing  according  to  the  conseieiu I 

the  State,  of  the  community,  while  morality  is  right 
doiim  according  to  the  conscience  of  the  individual: 
Or  both  are  virtue:  the  one  the  virtue  of  the  public, 
the  other  the  virtue  of  the  private,  conscience.  As  it  is 
in  the  Bible  with  the  words  and  the  thoughts,  which  still 
seem,  as  it  were,  vitally  connected  ;  so  it  is  here  with  the 
State  and  the  individual,  the  universal  and  the  particular  : 
both  are  still  one.  Existence  is  as  yet  objective  •.  sub- 
jectivity has  still  to  appear.  Now  thus  it  was  in  Greece 
upon  the  whole,  up  almost  to  the  time  of  Pericles  and 
the  Peloponnesian  war.  But,  during,  say,  some  two- 
hundred  years  before  that,  the  philosophical  consciousness 
had  been  gradually  growing,  and,  no  doubt,  during  the 
same  time,  the  common  mind  correspondently  altering. 
After  Anaxagoras,  the  rate  of  progress,  or,  as  it  may  be 
thought,  regress,  regress  especially  in  a  public  respect  it 
unquestionably  was  —  after  Anaxagoras  the  rate  of 
change  became  greatly  accelerated.  Publicly  such  men 
as  Alcibiades  and  Lysander  were  but  poor  substitutes  for 
such  others  as  Leonidas  and  Miltiades.  Then  there  were 
the  Sophists,  occupying  a  position  not  quite  public,  nor 
yet  again  quite  private.  In  these  respect 9  there  was 
regress;  but  what  we  have  in  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle, 
who  came  next,  is  progress,  and  compared  with  what 
result  preceded  it,  progress  nameable  pretty  well  infinite. 
Almost  it  would  seem  as  though  Anaxagoras  by  his 
reference  to  the  vovs  had  concentrated  all  attention  on 
intelligence  as  intelligence;  which  was  raised,  as  it  were, 
well-nigh   to  the  position  of  an  Absolute  then  when  the 


00  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

Sophists  said  or  seem  to  have  said  to  themselves,  That 
absolute  shall  he  ours,  ours  in  our  individual  consciousness 
it  thought  is  to  be  the  principle,  and  the  authority, 
and  the  deciding  consideration,  then  that  thought  is  ours 
even  as  we  are:  it  is  we  alone;  it  is  men  alone,  who 
think.  Socrates,  now,  was  a  reflective,  considerate 
personality  who  turned  over  everything  in  his  mind  to 
see  what  it  came  to,  what  was  the  worth  of  it.  But 
i  inning  from  the  fields  and  the  trees  to  the  homes  and 
haunts  of  men,  the  interests  that  were  offered  for  that 
reflection  and  consideration  of  his  could  only  be  of  a 
practical  nature.  That  is,  what  immediately  presented 
itself  to  him  was,  as  we  may  term  it,  the  ethicality  of 
the  past,  which,  shaken  in  the  present,  promised  but 
poorly  for  the  future.  So  it  was,  in  his  hands,  that 
ethicality  became  morality — in  this  way  that,  ethicality 
being  taken  into  his  consciousness  and  there  looked  at, 
cprestioned,  and  examined,  had  to  make  good  its  claim 
to  its  authority  of  heretofore.  Virtue,  that  is,  what  was 
right  and  good,  was  now  before  the  bar  of  the  single 
consciousness,  but  in  a  universal  regard.  And  it  was 
that  regard,  the  universality  of  that  regard,  that,  for  the 
first  time,  realized  in  history  and  the  life  of  man, 
morality  as  morality.  Actions,  if  they  had  been  ethical 
before,  were  now  to  be  moral.  On  the  question  of  right 
or  wrong,  the  tribunal  of  sentence  was  now  within,  and 
no  longer  without.  The  individual  was  now  referred  to 
his  own  self,  to  his  own  responsibility,  to  his  own  con- 
science and  judgment.  But  the  conscience  or  judgment 
must  not  be,  as  with  the  Sophists,  a  private  one,  in  this 
sense  that  the  individual  was  to  consider  only  what  was 
good  for  himself  as  this  particular  individual  that  he 
was,  Callicles,  Cebes,  Chaerephon,  or  another.  No ;  it 
was  not  one  of  these  as  one  of  these,  Callicles  as  Callicles, 
Cebes  as  Cebes,  Chaerephon  as  Chaerephon,  that  was  to 


MODALITY  AND   ETHICALITY.  91 

be  considered — not  each  as  he  was  in  his  immediate 
individuality,  but   each  as  he  was  in   hia   universality, 

each  as  he  was  iii  his  manhood,  each  as  he  was  in  his 
humanity.  The  conscience  thai  was  to  decide,  the  judg- 
nii-iit  thai  was  to  pass  sentence,  must  be  a  universal 
conscience,  must  lie  a  universal  judgment  Now  that 
universality  could,  ;is  was  plain  to  Socrates,  only  come 
by  knowing.  And  so  ii  was  that  to  Socrates  virtue  was 
knowledge  or  a  knowledge.  So  far,  too,  Socrates  was 
perfectly  right.  The  individual  will  universalize  his 
nature  only  by  knowledge.  It  is  by  knowledge  that  the 
individual  musl  excavate  himself;  it  is  by  knowledge 
that  he  must  dredge  and  deepen  himself;  by  knowledge 
that  he  must  widen  hi-  walls,  and  raise  his  roof,  letting 
in  light  and  fresher  air  upon  himself.  It  is  by  know- 
ledge that  ///"//  —  man  as  man — is  made  of  men,  Every 
true  growth  in  a  man's  garden  musl  singly  be  gone  round 
about,  and  tended  with  as  much  peculiarity  of  care  as, 
under  the  impost,  makes  a  perfect  exemplar  of  every 
individual  tobacco  plant  in  France.  Or  we  may  say,  in 
the  camera  of  a  man's  soul,  there  falls  many  a  blur  mi 
the  so  sensitive  crystal  there;  and  it  takes  the  cunning 
pouring  on  of  chemicals  to  transmute  the  haze  into 
transparency  and  shape.  And  all  that  is  principally  an 
affair  of  knowledge;  but  still  we  are  not  to  forgel  that 
knowledge  alone  is  nut  enough.  Socrates  was  wrong 
there;  and  Aristotle  added  the  training  and  discipline, 
the  custom  and  practice  that,  with  all  knowledge,  were 
still  necessary  to  make  man  good — good  not  only  in  his 
knowledge,  not  only  in  his  thoughts  and  wishes,  but  good 
also  in  his  will,  good  in  the  acts  and  actions  of  his  daily 
life. 

This,  then,  is  what  i-  meant  by  savin-  that  Socrates 
was  the  first  to  introduce  into  the  State  morality  as 
against  ethicality.      The   ethicality  of  the   State  was  still 


92  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

morality ;  but  it  was  the  material  morality  of  the  organ- 
ized objectivity  without,  as  against  the  ideal  morality  of 
the  conscious  subjectivity  within.  This  is  Socrates  in 
his  historical  position;  but,  though  averse  to  what  is 
called  meteorology,  and  even  expressing  himself  against 
it,  we  know  from  what  he  confessed  himself  to  have 
hoped  to  learn  from  Anaxagoras  concerning  the  sun,  and 
the  moon,  and  the  other  stars,  and  the  causes  of  all 
things — we  know,  from  as  much  as  this,  I  say,  that 
Socrates  still  entertained  a  lively  curiosity  in  respect  to 
the  constitution  of  this  universe.  That,  indeed,  could 
not  fail  the  inquirer  into  the  universal  will,  into  the 
universal  good  and  right.  And  it  was  from  that  side, 
in  fact,  that  he  had  his  interest  in  the  universe.  As  an 
observer  who  saw,  marked,  and  inwardly  digested  what 
he  saw  and  marked,  he  could  not  be  blind  to  the  in- 
numerable proofs,  as  he  said,  of  the  goodness  of  the  gods 
in  care  of  animal  life  in  the  world  around  him.  Man's 
body,  for  example,  what  a  contrivance  it  was, — what 
an  organism  of  contrivances  it  was  for  the  support,  pro- 
tection, and  enjoyment  of  the  soul  that  dwelt  in  it ! 
And  in  this  way  it  is  that  we  have  from  Socrates  his 
various  discourses  on  the  evidences  of  design  which  he 
saw  in  man  and  in  the  life  of  man.  In  consequence  of 
these  discourses  on  design,  indeed,  and  of  the  turn  he 
gave  them,  it  has  been,  so  to  speak,  officially  entered  into 
the  historical  record  that,  of  the  three  theoretical  argu- 
ments for  the  existence  of  God,  the  argument  from 
design  was  originated  and  first  used  by  Socrates  of 
Athens,  the  son  of  Sophroniscus  the  statuary  and 
Phaenarete  the  midwife.  Plato  and  Xenophon  have 
pretty  well  deified  this  Socrates  for  many  virtues  and 
for  many  excellences ;  and  we  have  just  seen  how  a  very 
peculiar  speciality  of  well -merited  fame  is  justly  his 
as  originator,  and  first,  in  regard  to  a  most  important  stage 


THE  FIRST  TELEOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT.  93 

— in  regard  to  a  main  epoch  in  the  progress  and  develop- 
ment of  morals  and  the  moral  principle  in  mankind ; 
lmt  what  lustre  attaches  to  his  name,  in  consequence  of 
the  argument  from  design,  is  only  second  to  that  in 
regard  to  morality.  "This  proof,"  says  Kant  (WW.  ii. 
485),  "deserves  to  be  named  always  with  reverence.  It 
is  the  oldest,  the  clearest,  and  the  most  suited  to  our 
common  understanding.  It  animates  the  study  of  nature, 
which  gives  existence  to  it,  and  acquires  thereby  ever 
new  power.  It  shows  ends  and  intentions  where  our 
own  observation  would  never  of  itself  have  discovered 
them,  and  extends  our  knowledge  of  nature  through 
guidance  of  a  peculiar  unity,  the  principle  of  which  is 
above  nature.  The  new  knowledge  acts  back  again 
towards  its  cause,  its  originating  idea  namely,  and  exalts 
our  belief  in  a  Supreme  Originator  into  an  irresistible 
conviction." 

We  shall  not  deny  as  against  this,  that  power  probably 
was  what  first  in  the  perception  or  feeling  of  men  led 
them  to  the  thought  and  the  worship  of  the  supernatural ; 
but  we  shall  incline  very  much  to  agree  with  the  opinion 
as  to  Greece  having  been  the  birthplace  of  the  first  teleo- 
logical  argument  for  the  being  of  a  God.  Only  to  men 
who  had  reached  their  majority, — only  to  men  who  looked 
about  them  in  reason,  and  in  full  freedom  were  led  in  all 
their  doings  by  reason, — only  to  such  men  was  it  at  all 
probable  that  the  "order"  of  this  universe  should,  as  in 
the  case  of  Anaxagoras,  for  the  first  time,  have  shown 
itself.  Only  of  reason  could  reason  have  been  seen. 
But  Kant  is  still  right  in  regard  to  the  value  and  im- 
portance of  the  argument  itself.  We  may  say,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  the  key  to  the  position,  and  only  with  special 
satisfaction  is  it  that  we  take  it  from  the  hand  of 
Socrates.  The  precise  source  of  our  information  in  this 
respect  is  the  Memorabilia  of  Xenophon.     There  we  find 


94  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

Socrates  conversing  again  and  again  on  the  evidence  of 
design  in  nature  and  in  the  objects  of  nature.  Since 
Kant,  as  we  know,  there  are  two  ways  of  looking  at 
design.  There  is  a  design  that  is  to  be  named  external, 
and  a  design  as  well  that  is  to  be  named  internal,  or 
immanent,  indwelling.  Of  these  it  is  only  the  latter 
that  is  worthy  of  the  name.  In  truth  there  is  no  design 
that  is  not  internal  and  immanent.  What  is  meant  by 
external  design  is  a  purpose  not  intrinsic,  but  quite  ex- 
trinsic to  the  relation  concerned.  The  common  joke  of 
Goethe  or  Schiller  in  the  Xcnkn  about  the  cork-tree 
having  manifestly  its  purpose,  the  reason  of  its  being  in 
the  manufacture  of  bottle-corks,  perfectly  illustrates  the 
idea,  or  that  a  clerk's  ear  was  made  that  he  might  carry 
a  pen  in  it !  And,  certainly,  in  regard  to  some  things 
adduced  by  Socrates,  the  designfulness  is  but  contingent 
or  external,  inasmuch  as  the  relation  between  the  terms 
or  factors  in  the  connections  alleged  are  not  always  seen 
to  depend  on  qualities  of  agreement  inherent  in  them. 
But  when  Socrates  proceeds  to  refer  to  thought  in  man 
and  its  necessary  exercise,  as  in  discrimination  and 
selection  of  the  beautiful  and  useful,  in  the  inventing  of 
language,  the  enacting  of  laws,  the  establishing  of  govern- 
ment, etc.,  it  is  possible  to  demur  to  as  much  as  that 
being  a  matter  of  mere  externality.  Nay,  when  with 
Aristodemus  the  little,  he  goes  more  into  details  in  this 
department,  as  regards  the  constitution  of  the  human 
body,  say,  it  seems  impossible  to  maintain  that  the 
design  he  signalizes  is  only  external  and  extrinsic. 

The  eyes,  ears,  nostrils,  tongue,  the  various  organs  and 
their  uses  by  no  means  evidently  concern  relations  of 
accident.  The  eyelids  that  close  when  necessary,  the 
eyelashes  that  are  as  a  screen,  even  the  eyebrows  that 
are  as  eaves  or  copings  to  ward  off  the  perspiration — I 
have  never  been  able  to  persuade  myself,  as  I  find  some 


l'KOOFS  OF  DESIGN BACON SOCRATES  FINALLY.       95 

others  do,  that  these,  too,  involve  correlations  that  are 
contingent  only.  In  this  reference,  Bacon,  for  example, 
has  the  following  in  The  Advancement  of  Learning  (ii. 
7.  7) :  "The  cause  rendered,  that  the  hairs  about  the  eye- 
lids are  for  the  safeguard  of  the  sigJtt,  doth  not  impugn 
the  cause  rendered,  that  pilosity  is  incident  to  the  orifices 
of  moisture :  muscosi  fontes,"  etc.  One  is  happy  to  see 
here  that  Bacon  does  still  not  deny,  but  admit  final 
causes :  "  both  causes,"  he  expressly  says,  in  the  immedi- 
ate reference  are  "  true  and  compatible,  the  one  declaring 
an  intention,  the  other  a  consequence  only."  But  one 
does  not  find  it  merely  self-evident  for  all  that,  that  eye- 
lids must  be  pilous,  even  as  fountains  are  mossy.  The 
fountain  makes  a  soil  for  low  germs  even  out  of  its 
stony  lip ;  but  the  tears  can  hardly  be  conceived  to  do 
as  much  by  the  covered  cartilage  that  borders  the  eye  ; 
while  the  eyebrow  and  perspiration  bring  no  analogy. 
I  hold  that  an  eye  is  immanent  in  nature,  that  an  eye  is 
a  necessity  of  nature,  and  that,  consequently,  all  is  at 
first  hand  complete  in  that  idea, — I  hold  this,  and  I  am 
not  ignorant  of  the  vast  varieties  of  the  vast  gradation 
of  eyes  which  nature  shows, — I  hold  this,  and  it  is  to 
me  nothing  against  it  that  a  lion's  eyebrow,  or  a  horse's 
eyebrow,  is  not  exactly  as  is  a  man's  eyebrow,  or  that 
such  and  such  a  tiny  insect,  microscopic  insect  if  you 
will,  has  a  score  or  twice  a  score  of  eyes.  Nature  is 
externality,  nature  is  boundless  external  contingency, 
and  the  idea  can  only  appear  in  nature  as  in  externality, 
as  in  boundless  external  contingency. 

One  hears  of  "  the  open  secret  of  the  universe  :  "  now 
the  open  secret  of  the  universe  is  just  that  idea — an 
idea  and  a  secret,  the  bearing  of  which,  on  design  at 
least,  was  not  hid  from  Socrates,  more  than  two  thousand 
years  ago.  He  tells  Aristodemus  that  whatever  mani- 
fests design  is  a  product  of  thought  and  not  of  chance. 


96  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTH. 

He  tells  him  all  these  things  about  the  eyebrows,  and 
the  eyelids,  and  the  eyelashes;  and  I  daresay  he  could 
have  told  Bacon  that  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  for 
all  moist  animal  orifices  to  be  pilous.  Among  others, 
there  are  the  lips,  for  example;  the  beard  does  not 
exactly  grow  on  the  lips ;  neither  is  it  the  moisture  of 
the  lips  that  has  anything  to  do  with  the  pilosity  of  the 
beard.  Besides  what  concerns  the  eye,  etc.,  Socrates 
refers  to  the  teeth, — the  front  ones  to  cut,  and  the  back 
ones  to  grind.  I  mention  this  as  it  is  insisted  on  also 
by  Aristotle.  Then  it  is  really  matter  for  congratulation 
to  find  Socrates  dwelling  on  the  thought  that  is  present 
in  the  general  structure  of  the  world.  Is  it  to  be  sup- 
posed, he  asks,  that  it  is  only  we  have  reason,  and  that 
there  is  none  in  the  whole  ?  It  is  really  wonderful  how 
this  man  must  reflect  on  everything,  and  give  himself 
account  of  everything  —  the  bare-footed,  poorly  -  clad, 
street  wanderer,  pot-bellied  and  Silenus-faced,  that  was, 
perhaps,  the  wisest,  best,  and  bravest  man  that  was 
then  alive.  His  God — and  he  was  sincerely  pious,  he 
worshipped  devoutly — His  God  was  the  God  of  the 
yvoofir),  the  understanding,  the  reason,  which  in  admon- 
ishing Aristodemus  he  opposed  to  the  ru^v,  the  chance, 
the  accident  and  chance  which,  at  least,  as  science  rules, 
alone  seem  worshipped  now-a-days.  Nor  had  the  pupil 
Plato  missed  the  lesson;  but  of  this  again  in  our  next. 


GIFFORI)  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

Plato — His  position — His  prose — Indebted  to  Socrates — Monotheism 
— The  popular  go» Is—  Socrates'  one  principle — His  method — 
Universalized  by  Plato-  Epinomis — The  Tvmaew — The  i 
etc. — Kant  here — Subject  and  object— Mechanical  and  final 
causes — The  former  only  for  the  latter  Identity  and  difference 
— Creation,  the  world — Time  and  (trinity — The  Christian 
Trinity — The  two  goods — Religion,  the  Laws  Prayer — Super- 
stition— Hume,  Dugald  Stewart,  Samuel  Juhnson,  Buckle— The 
Platonic  duality — Necessity  and  contingency — Plato's  work. 

With  the  name  of  Plato,  we  feel  that  we  are  approaching 

one  of  the  greatest  figures  in  all  time.  As  a  philoso- 
pher, the  first  place,  and  without  a  single  dissentient 
voice,  was  universally  accorded  him  throughout  the  whole 
of  antiquity.  So  completely  was  this  the  case,  that  it 
does  not  seem  for  a  moment  to  have  been  as  much  as 
dreamt  that  even  Aristotle  could  dispute  it  with  him. 
Nay,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that,  at  this  very  day,  were 
the  question  put  to  the  world  at  large  as  to  which  of  the 
two  philosophers  were  the  greater,  an  immense  majority 
of  votes  would  be  handed  in  for  Plato.  The  very  quality 
of  his  writing  would,  with  the  general  public,  readily 
secure  for  him  this.  With  an  ease  and  fulness  that  are 
natural  simplicity  merely,  there  is,  as  we  can  only  name 
it,  that  amenity  in  the  compositions  of  Plato  that  con- 
stitutes him,  unapproachably,  the  greatest,  sweetest,  most 
delicate  and  delightful  master  of  prose  that  ever  wrote 
it.  One  can  feel  oneself  here,  then,  in  such  a  presence, 
only  with  a  certain  apprehension.  What,  however,  comes 
to  save  us  from  being  altogether  oppressed  at   the  call  to 

G 


98  GIFFOKD  LECTUKE  THE  SIXTH. 

speak  on  Plato,  is  the  consideration  that  it  is  not  of  the 
great  whole  that  we  are  required  to  give  an  account,  but 
only  of  what  in  it  has  a  bearing  historically  on  the  proofs 
for  the  Being  of  a  God.  And  here  we  can  see  at  once 
that  Plato,  as  usual,  only  receives  the  torch  from  his 
master  Socrates,  not  merely  to  carry  it  and  hand  it  on  to 
his  further  fellow,  but  to  make  it  blaze  withal  both 
brighter  and  wider.  That,  too,  is  as  much  as  to  say 
that,  said  proofs  being  concerned,  we  have  here,  on  the 
part  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  two  degrees  in  the  advance 
to  monotheism.  What  Socrates  actually  said  in  this 
regard  comes  to  us  in  the  course  of  his  conversation,  now 
with  Aristodemus,  and  again  with  Euthydemus,  as  re- 
spectively recorded  in  the  first  and  fourth  books  of  the 
Memorabilia.  It  is  as  to  delov,  simply  as  the  Divinity, 
he  characterizes  the  gods,  when  he  speaks  of  them  to  the 
former  as  "  seeing  and  hearing  all  things  at  once,  as  being 
everywhere  present,  and  as  equally  caring  for  all  things  ;" 
while  to  Euthydemus  he  names  one  sovereign  god,  and 
others  subordinate.  "  The  other  gods,"  he  says,  "  who 
give  us  good  things  do  not  come  before  us  visibly  in  so 
doing,  and  he  who  regulates  and  keeps  together  the  whole 
world — he  is  manifest  as  thus  effecting  what  is  greatest, 
but  even  in  such  consummation  he,  too,  is  invisible  to 
us."  There  is  (no  doubt)  in  such  words  as  these  a 
monotheistic  tinge;  but  it  is  not  yet  pure.  In  that 
regard,  there  is  a  certain  advance  in  Plato;  he  still 
makes  respectful  reference  to  the  popular  gods,  in  what- 
ever has  a  public  bearing,  at  the  same  time  that,  in 
other  circumstances,  he  reprobates,  as  in  the  second  book 
of  the  Republic,  the  traditional  fables  about  the  parti- 
cular gods  almost  as  though  these  gods  themselves  were 
fabulous. 

If  we   do   but  consider,  however,  the   scientific   prin- 
ciples which  dominated  the  thoughts,  whether  of  Plato 


PLATO  INDEBTED  TO  SOCRATES.  99 

or  Socrates,  we  shall  not  wonder  at  this.  As  we  have 
seen,  the  one  great  principle  of  Socrates  was  the  good, 
whether  in  a  moral  or  a  physical  regard ;  for  even  in  the 
adjustment  of  the  external  universe,  he  took  it  with 
enthusiasm  from  the  hand  of  Anaxagoras  that  all  was 
for  the  best,  or  that  everything  precisely  was  where  it 
best  should  be.  Xow,  there  was  unity  in  the  very 
thought  here.  If  all  was  for  a  purpose,  and  if  we  were 
all  to  strive  to  a  single  end,  there  was  necessarily  a 
direction  given  in  our  thoughts  and  wills  towards  a 
single  power.  The  whole  tendency  of  such  teaching 
could  not  but  be  monotheistic — could  not  but  lead  away 
from  the  traditional  gods  with  question  and  doubt. 
Plato  directly  says,  "  God,  least  of  all,  should  have  many 
shapes;"  and  again,  "  God  is  what  is  absolutely  simple 
and  true"  (Rep.  381  B  and  382  E). 

The  mental  attitude  on  the  part  of  Socrates,  to  which 
his  principle  was  the  vital  force,  has  been  made 
abundantly  plain  to  us  both  by  Xenophon  and  Plato. 
Almost  any  single  conversation  in  the  one,  or  dialogue  in 
the  other,  will  suffice  for  proof.  So  far,  there  is  a  certain 
sameness  in  them  all.  For  example,  let  us  but  hear,  on 
the  one  hand,  Socrates  ask  Hippias  what  Beauty  is ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  Hippias  answer  Socrates  that  it  is  a 
beautiful  maiden, — let  us  but  hear  such  question  and 
answer,  knowing  well  the  retort  of  Socrates  in  the  end, 
that  he  does  not  want  to  know  what  a  beautiful  p 
is,  but  what  is  Beauty  itself,  and  we  are  well-nigh 
admitted  to  the  very  heart  of  the  mystery.  Beauty 
itself,  courage  itself,  justice  itself — that  was  the  perpetual 
quest  of  Socrates.  This  quest  of  his,  too,  was,  on  the 
whole,  always  in  a  moral  direction.  It  was  always,  also, 
by  a  certain  dissection  of  the  very  thinking  of  hi-  respon- 
dent, or  opposite,  that  he  came  to  his  result  Now,  what 
Plato  did   was  simply  to  universalize  all  this.      As    he 


100  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

deified  the  man  Socrates,  so  he  deified  his  work.  Firstly, 
to  extend  the  moral  quest  of  Socrates  into  the  whole  field 
of  knowledge, — this  for  Plato  was  to  discover  the  Ideas. 
Then,  again,  secondly,  the  mental  dissection  of  Socrates 
became  for  Plato  his  express  Dialectic.  While,  thirdly 
and  lastly,  what  was  an  indefinite  unity,  or  "  scattering 
and  unsure "  unities  with  Socrates,  was  carried  up  by 
Plato  into  the  single  unity  of  the  Good — a  good  that  was 
to  Plato  more  than  moral  good,  more  than  a  summating 
and  consummating  goodness — a  good  that  was  to  Plato 
God.  And  all  that  is  in  our  own  direction — all  that 
is  towards  monotheism — all  that  is  towards  Natural 
Theology — all  that  is  towards  realization  of  the  proofs  for 
the  Existence  and  Attributes  of  God. 

Even  in  that  reference,  even  specially  in  the  matter  of 
design,  we  may,  not  altogether  wrongly,  assume  Plato  to 
have  still  followed  his  master ;  but  in  him  we  do  not 
find,  so  easily  and  so  commonly  as  in  Socrates,  instances 
of  what  we  may  call  particular  design.  As  we  saw, 
indeed,  the  design  instanced  by  Socrates  was  not  always 
free  from  the  reproach  of  externality.  For  example,  we 
do  get  many  advantages  from  the  animals  we  have 
domesticated  ;  but  we  can  hardly  intimate,  as  Socrates 
would  seem  to  wish,  that  pigs  and  poultry  were  directly 
made  for  us.  Illustrations  in  this  kind  are,  perhaps, 
chiefly  or  alone  to  be  found  in  Plato,  when,  as  in  the 
Timaeiis,  he  is  engaged  in  his  fanciful  description  of  the 
construction  of  man.  There  is  a  passage  in  the  Upinomis 
that  refers  to  the  earth  producing  fruits  for  us  and  food 
for  animals,  as  well  as  to  winds  and  rains  that  we  see 
to  be  seasonable  and  in  measure.  The  Epinomis  is  denied 
to  Plato,  and  transferred  to  Philip  of  Opuntium.  Philip, 
however,  as  a  pupil  of  Plato's,  may,  possibly,  in  this  case, 
be  only  repeating  his  master.  The  illustration,  too,  how- 
ever   external    on    the    whole,   is    not   insusceptible    of 


THE  TIMAEUS — THE  EYES,  ETC.  101 

relative  application,  for  I  know  not  that  it  is  unallowable 
to  point  to  the  possibility  of  human  existence  as  dependenl 
on  the  totality  of  influences,  though,  for  the  rest,  winds 
certainly  do  blow  as  they  list,  and  rains  certainly  do  fall 
on  the  barren  sea  and  the  unproductive  desert.  In  the 
Timaeus  we  have  (45  E)  the  eyelids  and  the  hair 
(76  C  and  D)  of  the  head  spoken  of ;  the  former  as  pro- 
tective, and  the  other  as  a  covering,  production  by 
intention  being  assumed  in  both  cases.  Plato  talks  of 
the  flesh  simply  as  clothing,  but  designedly  thin  on  the 
joints,  not  to  impede  motion  (74  E).  Had  he  been  more 
of  an  anatomist,  contracting  muscles,  with  their  pointed 
terminal  tendons,  would  have  better  suited  his  purpose. 
The  Timaeus  dwells  (46  E,  47  A)  on  the  wonders  of  the 
eyes,  too,  and  on  the  wonders  of  what  has  been  submitted 
to  them.  But  for  the  eyes,  it  is  said,  proof  of  the 
universe  there  would  have  been  found  none,  since  without 
them  we  should  never  have  known  of  either  stars,  or  sun, 
or  heaven;  but  "now  day  and  night  and  the  changes  of 
the  year  yield  to  us  the  knowledge  of  time,  and  the 
power  of  investigating  the  universe  ;  "  and  "  from  these  we 
have  attained  to  that  thing  called  philosophy,  than  which 
a  greater  good  has  not  ever  come,  nor  ever  will  come,  a 
gift  from  the  gods  to  the  race  of  mortals"  (47  B).  Here 
what  Plato  has  in  mind  is  simply  the  information  we 
attain  by  sight,  simply  the  intellectual  advantage  of  that 
information.  He  has  no  idea  of  what  the  world  would 
be,  we  may  almost  say,  physically,  were  there  no  seeing 
subject  anywhere  to  be  found  in  it.  Such  an  idea  was, 
of  course,  impossible  to  Plato,  who  knew  nothing  about 
the  undulations  of  the  aether,  etc.  Something  of  the 
same  thought,  but  more  in  a  moral  reference,  occurs  in 
Kant.  He  says  in  the  Kritik  of  Judgment  (§  86),  "If 
the  world  consisted  of  beings  merely  inanimate,  or  some 
animate  and  some  inanimate,  but  the  animate  siill  without 


102  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

reason,  the  existence  of  such  a  world  would  have  no  worth 
at  all,  for  there  would  exist  in  it  no  being  that  possessed 
the  slightest  notion  of  any  worth  .  .  .  the  existence  of 
rational  beings  under  moral  laws  can  alone  be  thought  as 
final  cause  of  the  existence  of  a  world."  I  may  also 
remind  you  here  of  a  quotation  from  Colebrooke  which  I 
specially  emphasized  as  of  future  use.  This,  namely : 
"  There  must  be  one  to  enjoy  what  is  formed  for  enjoy- 
ment :  a  spectator,  a  witness  of  it :  that  spectator  is 
soul."  Nature,  as  I  said  then,  too,  is  not  there  independ- 
ently, self-subsistently,  and  on  its  own  account :  it  is 
there  only  for  a  purpose  and  as  a  means.  Evidently  a 
universe  without  a  spectator  to  make  it  his,  object 
without  subject,  would  be  a  gross  self-stultification,  a 
manifest  meaninglessness,  an  idle  anomaly,  a  palpable 
monstrosity,  an  arrant  cheat. 

Proceeding  nearer  to  our  main  subject  of  design 
generally,  we  may  remark  that,  in  the  Timacus,  Plato  is 
very  full  and  clear  on  that  to  us  essential  interest,  final 
causes,  and  in  their  opposition  to  physical  ones.  "  There 
are  two  genera  of  causes,"  he  says  {Tim.  68  E),  "  the  one 
necessary  and  the  other  divine."  The  one  cause,  that  of 
necessity,  being  subordinated  to  that  of  intellect,  and 
made  its  minister  and  servant  merely.  "  The  genesis  of 
this  world,"  it  is  said  (48),  "has been  effected  by  the  con- 
junction of  necessity  and  intellect ; "  but  necessity  is 
under  the  rule  of  intellect.  The  causes  of  necessity,  in 
short,  are  only  "  the  accessory  causes  which  the  Deity, 
in  realizing  the  idea  of  the  possibly  best,  uses  only  as 
hodmen  for  the  work ; "  adding,  however,  that  that  "  is 
not  the  conception  of  the  most,  who  hold  the  causes  of 
things  to' be  cold  and  heat,  solidification  and  liquefaction, 
etc. ;  but  both  causes  ought  to  be  spoken  of."  We  see 
thus  that  it  is  here  with  Plato  just  as  we  saw  it  was  with 
Socrates  in  reference  to  Anaxagoras.     Both  will  insist  on 


MECHANICAL  AND  FINAL  CAUSES.  103 

final  causes  as  equally  present  with  mechanical  ones,  but 
as  being,  at  the  same  time,  the  ruling  and  directing 
powers  of  these,  which  are  only  the  physical  materials 
and  mechanical  agents  in  realization,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
counsels  and  will  of  the  causes  we  call  final.  This  point 
of  view  is  perfectly  plain  in  Plato.  He  is  perfectly  well 
aware,  he  says,  that  there  are  those  who  maintain  that  the 
causes  of  necessity  are  the  only  causes,  and  that  what  arc 
named  final  causes  are  merely  secondary  causes  that  result: 
from  these;  that,  for  example,  fire  and  water,  and  earth 
and  air,  are  all  of  them  from  nature  and  chance,  and  none 
of  thern  from  plan  and  contrivance — that,  in  short,  chance 
and  physical  necessity  are  to  be  credited  with  the  pro- 
duction of  all  things,  heaven  with  all  that  is  in  it,  the 
seasons,  and  earth,  and  animals,  and  plants.  But  he 
will  still  believe  that  earth,  and  sun,  and  all  the  stars, 
and  the  seasons  so  beautifully  arranged  in  years  and 
months,  as  well  as  the  universal  faith  of  man,  whether 
Greek  or  barbarian,  prove  that  there  are  gods.  Besides 
this  passage  in  the  Laws  (88 G),  there  is  another  to  a 
like  effect  in  the  Timaeus. 

There  are  other  two  terms  very  current  in  Tlato,  here 
at  once  in  the  Timaeus,  for  example,  which  involve  pretty 
well  the  same  distinction  as  the  two  kinds  of  causes  do. 
They  are  identity  and  diiference,  for  to  that  meaning  the 
Greek  words  ravrov  and  ddrepov  amount.  These  are 
really,  just  as  in  the  form  of  final  and  physical  causes, 
the  warp  and  woof  of  the  whole  divine  fabric.  The  one, 
the  same  namely,  or  identity  as  identity,  is  the  principle 
of  the  permanent,  of  that  that  eternally  is.  And  that, 
plainly,  is  the  side  of  the  intellect,  the  side  of  tin  night, 
the  side  of  the  in  and  in.  The  other,  as  the  difference, 
the  otherwiseness,  is  just  as  it  is  named,  the  other  as 
other,  the  outer.  This  is  the  side  of  the  show,  of  the 
e\t  equalization,  the  side  of  the  senses,  the  side  of   the 


104  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

mutable  and  transitory.  Either,  too,  is  necessary  to  the 
other.  Identity  would  be  indistinguishable  unless  differ- 
■  net  d,  differentiated.  And  what  would  be  a  difference  that 
was  only  difference,  and,  by  consequence,  unidentified? 
The  inner  must  be  outered,  the  outer  innered.  Whatever 
is  must  be  able  to  appear.  The  physical  cause  is  but 
the  realization  of  the  final  cause.  The  Bdrepov,  the  other, 
the  difference,  is  but  the  realization  of  the  ravrov,  of  that 
that  is  the  same,  of  that  that  is  the  identity. 

But  if  there  is  a  side  of  the  intellect,  if  there  is  a  final 
cause  in  the  constitution  of  things,  then  design  is  at  the 
heart  of  them,  design  is  the  root  and  the  centre  of  the 
universe.  And,  in  fact,  it  seems  the  very  purpose  of  the 
entire  dialogue  of  the  Timaeus  to  prove  this.  That  dia- 
logue may  be  named  a  teleological  exposition  throughout. 
The  God,  for  the  sake  of  what  is  good  only,  fabricates,  in 
beauty  and  harmony,  the  entire  world,  and  man  in  par- 
ticular. The  former,  indeed,  the  world,  is  itself  described 
as  a  "blessed  god,"  possessed  of  intelligence,  life,  and 
soul.  All  that  is  made  in  it  is  made  after  an  eternal 
pattern,  the  most  beautiful  of  things,  and  from  the  most 
perfect  of  causes.  For  the  God  is  good,  and  there  is 
never  any  grudge  or  envy  in  the  good  about  anything 
whatever;  and  he  made  the  world,  consequently,  to  be 
like  unto  himself.  Thus,  then,  this  world  has  reason  in 
it,  and  is  truly  made  by  the  providence  of  God.  Further, 
created  most  beautiful  in  the  perfect  image  of  the  most 
beautiful,  it  is  declared  •  sole  and  single ;  for,  as  is 
implied,  perfection  needs  no  multiple. 

It  is  in  this  part  of  the  Timaeus  that  Plato  comes  to 
the  genesis  of  time.  We  have  seen  some  of  his  ex- 
pressions in  that  reference  already ;  but  it  is  difficult  to 
follow  him  here.  Difficult,  I  suppose,  the  subject  itself 
proved  to  Plato,  and  his  words  are  correspondently 
obscure.     The  notion  itself  of  the  Eternal  Being  that  was, 


TIME  AND  ETERNITY.  105 

and  is,  and  always  will  be,  offered,  as  a  notion,  probabl) 
no  hardship.  It  is  easy  to  use  the  words,  the  predicates 
that  describe  what  we  conceive  to  be  eternal,  as,  for 
example,  in  the  terms  of  Plato,  to  say  that  the  eternal, 
"  what  is  always  unmoved  the  same,  can  become  by  time 
neither  older  nor  younger,  nor  has  been  made,  nor  appears 
now,  nor  will  be  in  the  future,  nor  can  any  of  those  things 
at  all  attach  to  it  which  mortal  birth  has  grafted  on  the 
things  of  sense;"  but  how  to  bring  into  connection  with 
this  everlasting  rest  the  never-resting  movement  of  time 
— that  is  the  difficulty.  Plato  seems  to  say  that  all  the 
phenomena  of  sense  are  nothing  but  "  the  forms  of  t inn- 
imitating  eternity,  and  moving  numerically  in  its  circle.' 
Now,  if  I  read  my  own  notion  into  these  obscure  words, 
perhaps  it  will  help  to  the  formation  of  no  irrelevant  idea. 
Suppose  eternity  a  continuum,  and  time  to  measure  the 
discrcta  of  it, — eternity  to  be  a  continuity,  and  time  to 
enumerate  the  parts  or  divisions  of  it, — eternity  to  be  a 
completed  and  an  ever-enduring  circle,  ami  time  to  be  the 
counting,  the  traversing  of  the  dots,  the  infinite  dots,  thai 
compose  its  periphery, — suppose  we  conceive  this,  then 
we  may  have  something  of  a  picture  of  both  the  unmoved 
and  the  moving,  and  yet  in  coherent  relation.  Now,  that 
may  be  the  truth.  Time  may  be  no  straight  line,  as  we 
are  apt  to  figure  it,  but  a  curve — a  curve  that  eventually 
returns  into  itself.  In  that  way  the  phenomena  of  sense 
will  be  but  as  the  hands  of  time  externalizing  its  moments, 
the  moments  of  time,  even  as  the  hands  of  the  clock  point 
out,  or  externalize,  the  divisions  of  the  hour. 

But,  leaving  these  dark  matters,  it  is  in  this  pari  of 
Plato  that  we  find  that  reflexion  of  the  Christian  Trinity 
which  is  so  often  referred  to.  The  words  Maker  and 
Father  occur  about  a  dozen  pages  on  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Timaeus.  There  it  is  said:  "Of  this  the  All,  to 
find  the  Maker  and  Father  is  difficult,  and   having   found 


106  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

him,  it  is  impossible  to  declare  him  to  all  men."  Farther 
on  (37  0)  we  have  this  :  "  When  the  Father  that  created 
it  saw  it  moving  and  alive,  this  the  created  image  of  the 
blessed  gods,  he  was  well  pleased."  We  have  seen  this 
creation  itself  already  called  "a  blessed  god;"  and  a  few 
pages  earlier  than  the  last  quotation  (at  31  A  and  B), 
unity,  eh,  is  not  only  asserted  of  this  "  blessed  god,"  but 
it  is  even  called  fiovoyevijs,  a  word  that  in  St.  John  and 
elsewhere  is  always  translated  "  only-begotten."  This 
remarkable  term,  too,  is  to  be  found  repeated  at  the  very 
end  of  the  dialogue.  Lastly  (50  D),  we  have  this  that  is 
the  "  only-begotten  "  also  called  "  Son."  The  Greek  word 
is  not  tuc9,  indeed,  but  still  it  is  e/cyovos,  a  word  of  ex- 
actly the  same  import.  On  the  whole  it  is  not  surprising 
that  these  expressions  in  Plato  of  an  only-begotten  Son, 
made  in  the  image  of  the  Father,  should,  on  the  part  of 
the  Christian  world,  have  attracted  so  much  attention. 
This  passage  in  Plato  probably  it  was  that  led  the  Fathers 
of  the  Church,  followed  by  the  ecclesiastical  majority  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  to  represent,  as  I  formerly  remarked, 
the  existent  world  as  the  Son.  The  Jew,  Philo  of  Alex- 
andria, it  is  to  be  said  also,  used,  in  respect  of  the  world, 
the  same  expression  of  Son  of  God.  We  may  note  here, 
also,  that  Numenius  of  Apamea  (a  Pythagorean  philoso- 
pher familiar  with  the  writings  of  Plato,  who  lived  in 
the  second  century)  has  distinct  references  to  the  Good 
as  God,  and  to  the  world  as  his  only-begotten  Son. 
Philo  was  still  a  Jew  at  least  forty  years  after  the  death 
of  Christ,  so  that  it  is  not  to  be  thought  that  either  he  or 
Numenius  had  a  Christian  reference  in  the  use  of  the  phrase. 
Even  as  regards  Plato,  the  analogy,  I  doubt  not,  is  only 
to  be  characterized  as  verbal.  What,  in  truth,  he  means 
by  the  two  that  he  names  here  God  and  World  or  Son 
are  simply  the  two  principles  which  we  have  so  often 
seen  already — identity  and  difference ;    the  two  causes, 


BELIGION,  THE  LAWS.  107 

design  and  necessity,  or  the  two  Goods,  as  in  the  Laws 
(631  B),  the  divine  and  the  human,  the  latter  conditional 
on  the  former,  so  that  "  if  any  city  receives  the  greater, 
it  possesses  also  the  less ;  but  if  not,  it  is  without  either." 
"  It  is  not  possible,"  says  Plato  {Laws,  967  D),  "  for  any 
one  of  mortal  men  to  become  permanently  pious  who 
accepts  not  these  two  affirmations,  that  the  soul,  as  it  is 
the  eldest  of  all  that  is  created,  is  immortal,  and  rules 
everything  corporeal."  That  is,  again,  the  duality  in 
question,  and  we  see  it  is  made  here  the  condition  of 
piety ;  for  piety  is  to  Plato  always  the  ultimate  result. 
"  Whoso,  according  to  the  laws,  believes  that  there  are 
gods,  he  never  willingly  did  a  wrong  deed  nor  spoke  a 
wrong  word"  (Laivs,  8  85  B)  :  accordingly  Plato  is  at 
pains  to  prove  the  existence,  the  power,  and  the  justice 
of  God.  The  whole  of  the  tenth  book  of  the  Laws  may 
be  regarded  as  such  proof  ;  and  a  very  slight  change 
might  make  the  whole  discussion  of  the  religious  element 
there  assume  quite  a  modern  look.  We  are  not  surprised, 
then,  in  Plato,  to  find  the  first  of  every  inquiry,  as  in 
the  Timaeus  (2  7  C),  to  be  an  invocation  for  the  blessing 
of  the  God,  and  a  prayer  that  whatever  might  be  said 
should  be  agreeable  to  his  will,  and  becoming  to  them- 
selves, the  inquirers.  And,  probably,  just  such  a  state 
of  mind  is  natural  to  humanity  as  humanity.  I  fancy 
that  in  front  of  any  serious  emergency,  of  any  grave 
responsibility,  invocation  rises  spontaneously  in  a  man, 
were  he  even  an  atheist.  No  one  to  Plato  (Epin.  989  D) 
can  even  teach,  unless  the  God  lead.  This  piety  on  the 
part  of  Plato,  as  on  the  part  of  Socrates  his,  has  been 
stigmatized  as  superstition. 

Now,  there  are  undoubtedly  such  things  as  supersti- 
tions, and  they  may  exist  in  weak  minds  in  such  excess 
as  seriously  to  interfere  with  the  sound  and  healthy 
transaction    of   the    business    of    life.      "  It    is  natural," 


108  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

says  Hume  {Nat.  Hist,  of  Bel.  iii.),  "  that   superstition 
should  prevail  everywhere  in  barbarous  ages."     And  then 
he   tells   us  also  of  the  superstition  of  the  educated— of 
such  men  as  Pompey,  and  the  advanced  Cicero,  and  the 
wily  Augustus.     "  That  great  and  able  emperor,"  he  says 
of  the  last,  "  was  extremely  uneasy  when  he  happened 
to  change  his  shoes,  and  put  the  right-foot  shoe  on  the 
left  foot."     Dugald  Stewart  also  is  to  be  found  quoting 
this  same  anecdote  of    Augustus,  and   reflecting  some- 
what loftily  on  superstition  occasionally  appearing  in  the 
most    enlightened.     In    illustration,    he    quotes    a   long 
paragraph  from  Bos  well  about  Dr.  Johnson  counting  his 
steps  so  as  to  have  his  left  or  right  foot  first  in  refer- 
ence to  an  entrance  or  an  exit,  and  winds  up  with  this 
reflection  from  his  Professorial  Chair  :  "  They  who  know 
the  value  of  a  well-regulated  and  unclouded  mind  would 
not   incur  the  weakness  and   wretchedness  exhibited  in 
the  foregoing  description  for  all  his  literary  acquirements 
and  literary  fame."     Dugald  Stewart  is  one  of  our  very 
best  and  most  elegant  writers  of   philosophical  English. 
Philosophically,  he  had  an  excellently  well-filled  mind  too, 
and  seldom  writes  anything  that  is  not  interesting  and 
valuable.     Despite  a  little  spoiling,  moreover,  from  a  vast 
success,  social  and  otherwise,  he  kept,  on  the  whole,  as 
we   see   in  his  intercourse  with  Burns,  his  manhood  by 
him.      Nevertheless,  when  he  prelects  in  that  grandiose 
fashion  on  poor  Johnson,  he  can  only  remind  us   of  the 
great  Mr.  Buckle  evolving  his  periods  mouthwards  like 
the  ribands   of   a  showman  from  the  very  drum-head  of 
the  Aufklarung.     "  They  who  know  the  value  of  a  well- 
regulated  and  unclouded  mind,"  that  is  the  very  jargon 
of  the  general  position,  and  is  not  more  Dugald  Stewart's 
than    it   is    Thomas    Henry    Buckle's    and    a     hundred 
others',  David  Hume  among  them.      "  The  weakness  and 
wretchedness  exhibited  in  the  foregoing  description" — 


SUPERSTITION.  100 

that  means  the  counting  of  his  steps  on  the  part  of  John- 
son ;  and,  looking  at  it  so,  we  may  fail  to  see  the  wretched- 
ness.     It   does  not  appear    as   though  Samuel   Johnson 
had,  in  the  main,  during  life  been  a  wretched  man.      But 
be  it  as  it  may  with  the  wretchedness,  perhaps  we  will 
allow    the    "  weakness "  ?       Well,    truly    estimated    and 
appreciated,  what  underlay  and   had   initiated   the   habit 
was  certainly  a  weakness,  in  the  sense  that  it  concerned 
a  non-ens ;  it  is  quite  safe  to  say  that,  if  Johnson  had  not 
counted,   had    not    thought   of   his   steps,  but   had    done 
unconsciously  precisely  what  he  consciously  did  do, — it  is 
quite   safe  to  say  that,  in  that  way,  no  actual   circum- 
stance of  time  and  place  varying,  the  events  and  issue  of 
the  day  then  and  thereafter  would  have  been  identically 
the  same  as  they  were  in  fact  experienced.      But  if   there 
was  weakness,  there  was  also   to   some   extent  strength. 
Johnson  made  no  attempt  in  any  way  at  concealment  ; 
he  did  not  hide  the  habit ;  he  practised  it  in  aperto.      Of 
course,  it  may  be  very  naturally  suggested  that  Boswell 
was  but  a  weak  brother,  and  Johnson  might    have  been 
careless   of  his  opinion.      But,   then,    in   Stewart's  very 
quotation  from  Boswell,  the  information  is  as  of  a  matter 
within  the  common  knowledge  of  "  his  friends."     I  don't 
know,  therefore,  that  many  of  ourselves  would  have  been 
as   bold   as  Johnson ;    we    might,   perhaps,  have  felt    a 
greater  amount   of  shame   and  timidity   at   the  idea  of 
exposing    ourselves.      And   yet  we   may   have   our  own 
superstitions  not   less,  or  not  much  less,  than  Johnson. 
In  saying  this,  I   simply  go   on   the   broad  fact   of  our 
common   humanity.       Man,    as  man,   from    the   first   of 
days   to   the  last,  will  always   show  the  cross,  the  con- 
trarium,   the  contradiction,  the   Platonic  duality,   which 
forms  the  frame  or  groundwork  of  his  nature.      Man  will 
never  cease  to  humble  himself  in   heart   and   soul  before 
the  mystic  Divinity  of  this  universe  ;  but  he  will  always 


HO  GIFFOllD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

be  found,  nevertheless,  sneaking  towards  a  Mumbo- Jumbo 
that  he  is  rather  ashamed  of.  He  will  always  have  his 
luck  and  his  unluck,  with  the  signs  and  the  means  to  see 
and  foresee,  to  ward  or  forward  accordingly.  I  suppose  he 
will  always  count  his  sneezes,  and  wish  them  to  end  in 
an  odd  one  !  Such  things  as  amulets,  charms,  luck- 
articles  of  a  thousand  descriptions,  will  never  die  out. 
Tokens,  foretokens,  and  fortune-telling,  Biblical  or  Ver- 
gilian  lots — instances  of  such  things  will  in  no  time  be 
lost  amoiF  us.  We  may  depend  upon  it  that  our  table- 
turnings,  spirit-rappings,  spectral  apparitions,  and  what 
not,  will  not  be  without  their  successors  even  to  the 
remotest  ages.  Superstition  is  the  shadow  of  religion  ; 
and  they  will  seldom  be  found  separate, — quite  as  though 
there  were  two  authorities,  two  ruling  powers,  two 
dominions  :  one  of  the  heavens,  and  another  of  the  earth  ; 
one  of  the  light,  and  another  of  the  dark  ;  one  of  our 
hopes,  and  another  of  our  fears.  And  so,  doubtless,  it 
really  is.  Here,  again,  it  is  but  the  cross,  the  contrarium, 
the  contradiction,  that  crops  up  to  us.  Once  more,  as 
has  been  said,  we  have  to  look  for  a  rationale  to  the 
Platonic  duality.  Eeligion  shall  go  with  the  ravrov, 
the  identity ;  and  superstition  with  the  Odrepov,  the 
difference.  Or  we  may  apply  in  the  same  way  the  two 
genera  of  causes.  He  who  realizes  final  causes,  and  the 
intellectual  side,  is  necessarily  religious ;  while  he  who 
realizes  physical  causes,  and  the  corporeal  side,  is  neces- 
sarily superstitious.  And  as  both  causes  go  together, 
the  same  man,  as  in  the  case  of  Johnson,  may  be  at  once 
religious  and  superstitious ;  rather,  perhaps,  it  belongs 
to  man,  as  man,  to  be  at  once  both.  Xow  of  physical 
causes  the  outcome  is  contingency.  I  know  that  the 
opposite  of  this  is  generally  said.  See  the  waves  upon 
the  shore,  it  is  said  ;  there  is  not  one  of  them  that,  in  its 
birth  and  in  its  end,  and  in  its  entire  course  between,  is 


NECESSITY  AND  CONTINGENCY.  Ill 

not  the  result  of  necessity.      That  is  true  ;  but  it  is  also 
true  that   not  one  of   these   waves  but  is  the  result  of 
infinite  contingency.     Every  air  that  blows,  every  cloud 
that  passes,  every  stray  leaf,  or  branch,  or  feather  of  bird 
that  falls,  every  contour  of  the  land,  every  stone  or  rock 
in  the  sea-bottom,  almost,  we  may  say,  every  fish  in  the 
element  itself,  has  its  own  effect ;  and  the  various  waves, 
in    their   form,  and   size,  and   velocity,   are    the   conjoint 
result.      That   is   necessity;  but   it   is   also   contingency. 
That  is,  the  serial  causal  influences  cross  each  other,  and 
from  their  own  infinitude,  as  well  as  from  the  infinitude 
of  space  and  time,  in  both  of  which  they  are,  they  are 
utterly  incalculable  and  beyond  every  ken.      That  is  con- 
tingency.    There  are  infinite  physical  trains  in  movement. 
Each    taken   by   itself   might    be   calculable;    but  these 
trains   cross  each   other  in    the  infinitude  of  space  and 
time   endlessly  ;  and  that   is    not    calculable — the    con- 
tingency of  them,  the  tingency  con,  the  touching  or  falling 
together  of  them.      This   touching  together  is  something 
utterly  unaccountable.      The  outcome  to  us  in  the  finite 
world, — so  to  speak,  in  the  terminal  periphery,  can  only  be 
that  we  are  submitted  to  a  ceaseless  to  and  fro,  to  a  bound- 
less miscellaneousness,  an  infinite    pile-mile.      But  that 
being,  it  is  with  infinite  astonishment  that  I  have  heard 
necessity  thrown   at  philosophy,  as  though   the    belief  of 
philosophy     must      necessarily     be     necessity.       Plato's 
intellectual  world,  the  world  of   the  ideas  in  hypothetical 
evolution  the    one   from   the  other,  may  be  a   realm    of 
necessity ;  but  such  necessity  is  already  contingency  the 
moment    that    this    realm,    the    ideas    themselves,  have 
become  externalized — got  flung,  that  is,  into  otherness  as 
otherness,   externality  as   externality.      And    thus    it  is 
that,  in  philosophy,  contingency  is  the   category  of   the 
finite.  Everycrossing  in  the  infinite  pile-mile  may  be  plain 
to  a  spaewife,  possibly;   but  it  oilers  no  problem  for  any 


1 1  2  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

reason  as  reason.  It  is  in  this  connection,  too,  that  I 
have  heard  very  competent  people  speak  of  the  system  of 
philosophy  as,  of  necessity,  a  system  of  necessity,  moral 
as  well  as  metaphysical,  and  not  of  free  will.  That,  to 
me,  as  before,  gives  again  boundless  astonishment.  Why, 
it  is  only  in  a  realm  of  contingency  that  there  were  any 
scope  for  free  will;  it  is  only  against  contingencies  that 
free  will  has  to  assert  itself ;  it  is  only  in  their  midst 
tli at  free  will  can  realize  itself. 

And  here  we  have  come  at  last,  perhaps,  to  the  very 
an gle  of  the  possible  rationale  of  superstition.  We  have  no 
power  ourselves  over  contingency :  it  ramps,  and  frolics, 
and  careers,  in  its  blind  way,  independent  of  us.  Of  course, 
it  is  understood  that  I  speak  of  things  as  they  are  open  to 
the  reason  which  is  given  us :  to  omniscience  and  omni- 
potence, there  can  be  neither  contingency  nor  necessity. 
But  taking  it  just  so  as  it  is  to  mankind,  here,  it  seems, 
there  were  a  realm  in  which  chance,  and  chance  alone,  ran 
riot.  How,  then,  propitiate,  conciliate,  and,  so  to  speak, 
win  the  soft  side  of  chance  ?  It  is  only  so  that  one  can 
explain  or  excuse  the  existence  of  superstition  in  so  power- 
fully intelligent,  and  so  religiously  devout  a  mind  as  that 
ot  Samuel  Johnson.  And  if  we  can  so  speak  of  the  exist- 
ence of  superstition  in  his  mind,  we  may  similarly  speak 
of  its  existence  in  those  of  most  others.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  Johnson  prayed  most  reverently  and  fervently — there 
is  no  doubt  that  he  trusted  himself  wholly  to  God ;  but 
yet,  for  all  that,  there  seem  to  have  been  for  him  as  well 
powers  of  contingency  :  he  would  render  them  favourable, 
too,  and  have  even  chance,  luck  on  his  side.  The  realm 
of  the  infinite,  the  realm  of  the  ravr6v,  the  realm  of  the 
final  causes,  led  him  to  God ;  but  he  could  not  ignore  and 
turn  his  back  upon  the  realm  of  the  finite,  the  realm  of 
the  Ocnepov  and  difference,  the  realm  of  the  physical  causes. 
I  »!  (nurse,  this  also  is  true :  that  it  is  just  as  the  race  or 


plato's  wobk.  113 

the  individual  advances  in  knowledge  and  in  wisdom  that 
the  latter  world  disappears  more  and  more  from  our  con- 
science; and  the  former  world  alone  has  place.  Far  back  in 
time  the  race  had  superstition  only,  and  not  religion;  bntas 

regards  the  individual,  it  is  only  some  four  hundred  ye 
since  a  king  of  France,  Louis  XI.,  knelt  to  a  leaden  in) 
in  his  hatband  on  the  mound,  and  invoked  his  "gentle 
mistress,"  his  "only  friend,"  his  "good  lady  of  Clery,"  to 
intercede  with  God  Almighty  for  the  pardon  to  him  of  his 
many  murders,  that  of  his  own  brother  among  them  !  No 
man  can  call  that  religion.  To  a  Louis  XL  heaven  was 
peopled  with  contingencies,  even  as  the  earth  was.  To 
him  final  causes  there  were  none  ;  caprice  was  all.  Plato, 
in  his  perception  of  physical  as  but  the  material  for  final 
causes,  was  quite  in  another  region  than  the  most  Christian 
king  of  France.  In  fact,  Plato's  whole  world  view  was 
that  of  a  single  teleological  system  with  the  Good  alone  as 
its  heart,  with  the  will  of  God  alone  as  its  creator  and 
soul. 

Plato,  then,  in  a  way,  but  carries  out  and  compl 
what  Socrates  began.  Socrates  was  not  content  with  right 
action  only  as  action,  he  must  see  and  know  why  it  was 
right;  action,  as  it  were,  he  must  convert  into  knowledge; 
that  is,  for  man's  action,  as  a  whole,  he  must  find  general 
principles,  and  a  general  principle.  NowaU  that  involved, 
first,  a  dialectic  of  search;  second,  the  ideas  and  the  . 
as  a  result;  and  third,  the  realization  of  the  State  as  its 
practical  application.  But  that  is  simply  to  name  the 
work  of  Plato  in  its  three  moments.  The  State  was  his 
one  practical  result;  the  ideas  and  the  idea  the  media  of 
realization;  and  the  dialectic  the  instrument  of  their 
discovery,  limitation,  and  arrangement.  The  ideal  system, 
then,  was  the  centre  of  the  Platonic  industry.  Sensible 
existences,  the  things  of  sense,  have  for  Plato  no  real  truth. 
All  that  we  see  and  feel  is  in  perpetual  llux,  a    perpetual 

II 


114  CIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTH. 

mutation.  The  ideas  alone  are  the  truth  of  things ;  and 
things  have  truth  only  in  so  far  as  they  participate  in  the 
ideas.  For  ideas  are  the  paradeigmata  of  things,  and  things 
are  but  the  sensible  representations  of  these.  What  the 
ideas  logically  are,  things  ontologically  are  ;  but  the  logical 
(dement  is  alone  true ;  while  the  ontological  element,  as 
representative,  is  but  temporary  show  only.  The  only 
true  ontological  element,  the  ovtccs  ov,  is  the  Good.  To 
the  Good  not  only  is  the  knowledge  of  things  due,  but  it 
is  the  Good  also  that  gives  them  being.  It  is  for  it,  and 
because  of  it,  and  through  it  that  all  things  are.  It  alone 
is  the  principle,  and  the  ratio  essendi,  and  the  foundation 
of  philosophy  itself.  Man,  being  in  his  constitution  double, 
the  truth  of  his  senses  is  alone  thought.  The  end-aim 
of  everything,  and  the  end-aim  of  the  entire  system  of 
everything  is  thought.  That  alone  is  good,  and  the  Good 
alone  is  God.  And  God  is  the  creator  of  the  universe. 
The  Good,  design  is  so  absolutely  the  principle  of  all  things 
for  Plato,  that  whatever  exists,  exists  just  because  it  is 
better  that  it  should  be  than  not  be.  Design,  the  one 
principle  of  design,  is  the  vovs  itself :  "tyvyfj  aiTtov  airdvrwv, 
the  soul  is  the  cause  of  all  things,  and  that  amounts  to 
this,  that  all  things  are  first  of  all  in  the  soul,  only  not 
externalized.  I  hope  we  have  some  conception  of  where 
Plato  is  historically  as  regards  the  proofs  required  by 
Natural  Theology. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

Sophists-  A.ufklarung— Disbelief,  Simon  of  Tournay,  Amalrich  of 
Bena,  David  of  Dinanl  Italian  philosophers, « reneva  Socinians, 
Bacon,  Hnlil.es,  the  Deists,  Locke, Descartes,  Spinoza— Hume, 
Gibbon — Germany,  Reimarus,  etc  Klopstock,  Lavater — Leas- 
ing, Eamann,  Eerder,  Jacobi — Goethe,  Schiller,  Jean  Paul — 
Carlyle — Prance — Kant  and  his  — Necessary  end   of 

Buch  movements— <  alargumenl  -Locke,  Clarke,  Leib- 

nitz— AristotL — Dependency —  Potentiality  and  actuality  —  A 
beginning — Aristotle  and  design— Mr.  Darwin's  mistake— Em- 
pedocles  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest 

ONE  can  hardly  leave  Plato  without  saying  a  word  about 
the  Sophists:  it  is  his  handling  of  some  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous Sophists,  indeed,  that  constitutes  the  special  charm 
of  several  of  his  very  best  dialogues.  Amongst  the 
individual  Sophists,  there  are,  of  course,  many  character- 
istic differences;  still,  when  looked  at  from  a  certain 
historical  distance,  they,  so  to  speak,  appear  to  run  into 
each  other,  as  though  but  units  in  a  single  movement. 
One  general  spirit  we  assume  to  unite  them  all,  one 
common  atmosphere  to  breathe  around  them.  In  brief, 
they  all  step  forward  as  the  apostles  of  the  new  ;  and  this 
distinction  they  all  arrogate  in  one  and  the  same  way,  by 
pointing  the  finger  at  the  old.  Suppose  the  old  to  be  a 
clothed  figure,  then  one  Sophist  has  the  credit  of  stripping 
oil'  its  gown,  another  its  tunic,  a  third  it-  I  ad  so 

on.    So  it  is  that  the  whole  movement  is  shut  up  in  a  single 
word  now-a-days,  the  word  Aujklarung.       In  the  G 
Sophists  we  have  before  us  the  Greek  Aufklarung.     Auf- 
klaruug  is  Klarung  Auf,  a   clearing   up.      It   means  that. 


116  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

as  it  were,  day  had  dawned,  that  light  had  come,  that 
people  at  last  had  got  their  eyes  opened  to  the  absurdity 
of  the  lies  they  had  hitherto  believed  in.  It  was  as  though 
they  had  suddenly  turned  round  upon  themselves,  and 
found,  strangely,  all  at  once,  everything  in  the  clearness 
of  a  new  revelation.  They  were  all  wrong,  it  seemed : 
they  had  been  dreadfully  stupid.  Hitherto  they  had  lived 
only,  and  never  thought ;  but  now  they  both  saw  and 
thought.  This  was  not  true,  and  that  was  not  true. 
There  was  absurdity  there,  and  there  was  absurdity  here. 
And  it  was  only  they  were  right — only  they,  the  Sophists 
themselves.  They  saw  how  it  was  with  all  things,  and  they 
could  speak  of  all  things.  They  saw  just  so  well,  indeed, 
and  had  so  much  power  in  the  seeing,  that,  on  the  whole, 
they  could  speak  of  all  things  pretty  well  as  they  pleased. 
That  is  very  briefly,  but  not  unjustly,  to  name  the 
Sophists  as  we  see  them  in  Plato.  If  we  but  take  up 
into  our  minds  the  general  characteristics  of  this  move- 
ment, then,  the  movement  on  the  part  of  these  Sophists 
— if  we  but  take  it  up  into  our  minds  and  name  it 
Aufkliirung,  we  shall  have  some  idea  of  what  an 
Aufkliirung  means.  It  was  not  the  Sophists,  however, 
that  suggested  the  word.  This,  the  suggestion,  was  due, 
not  to  an  ancient,  but  to  a  modern  movement — a  move- 
ment that  was,  on  the  whole,  more  peculiarly  French,  but 
still  a  movement  in  which  England,  Germany,  Holland, 
and  all  the  other  nations  of  Europe  more  or  less  partici- 
pated. It  was  preceded  here,  in  Europe,  I  mean,  by  a 
want.  This  want  was  the  product  of  suffering,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  of  the  ordinary  human  curiosity,  or  the 
desire  of  gain,  on  the  other.  Political  tyranny  and 
religious  corruption  had  become,  on  the  part  of  the 
arbitrators,  whether  of  the  State  or  the  Church  we  may 
not  too  incorrectly  say,  universal.  Men  grew  scandalized, 
indignant ;  yearned   for   delivery   from  the   wrong ;  and 


SPINOZA'S  TRACTATUS  TIIEOLOGICO-POL1TICUS.        117 

revolted  against  both — both  Church  and  State.  Mean- 
time, too,  discoveries  in  the  pursuit  of  curiosity  or  gain 
had  been  going  on.  There  were  discoveries  by  sea,  and 
there  were  inventions  in  the  arts.  America  was  dis- 
covered, and  gunpowder — gunpowder  and  printing  were 
invented.  Greek  fugitives  had  fled  into  Italy ;  Protest- 
antism arose.  There  was  but  one  general  result ;  there 
was  but  one  desire  awakened — the  desire  to  know. 
And  it  was  the  desire  to  know,  conjoined  with  the 
political  and  ecclesiastical  wrong,  that  gave  rise  to  the 
modern  Aufklarung.  What  concerns  religion  is,  un- 
doubtedly, the  most  notable  phase  of  the  Aufklarung, 
but  it  is  not  the  only  one.  The  Aufklarung  was  a 
movement  of  the  whole  of  humanity,  and  extended  into 
humanity's  veriest  roots,  political,  social,  educational,  and 
all  other.  So  far  as  books  are  concerned,  perhaps  it  is 
the  religious  element  that  shows  most.  There  are  not 
wanting  many  heretical  opinions  during  the  whole 
history  of  the  Church,  some  of  which  were  as  extreme 
in  their  quality  as  even  those  of  a  Hume,  or  a  Voltaire 
himself.  As  early  as  about  1200,  there  was  Simon  of 
Tournay,  with  his  book,  dc  Tribus  Impostoribus,  and, 
somewhat  later,  the  followers  of  Amalrich  of  Bena,  and 
David  of  Dinant.  Considerably  later  than  these  still 
there  were  the  Italian  Philosophers  of  the  Transition 
Period,  and  the  Socinians  of  Geneva,  who,  with  their 
questions,  harrowed  the  very  soul  of  Calvin.  Bacon, 
Hobbes,  and  the  English  Deists  may  or  may  not  be 
reckoned  to  the  movement  of  the  Aufklarung;  in  strict 
accuracy,  perhaps,  they  were  better  named  its  fore- 
runners ;  among  whom  even  John  Locke  is  sometimes 
included,  and,  if  John  Locke,  then  surely  also  Rene* 
Descartes.  For  myself  it  always  appears  to  me  that  the 
Tradatus  Thcologico  -  Politicus  of  Spinoza,  published 
perhaps    about    1G60,    may    be    very    fairly    accounted 


118  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

the  beginning  itself  of  the  Aufklarung.      That  work   is 
very  much  the  quarry  from  which  Voltaire  drew — very 
much  a  source  of  direction  and  supply  also  to  the  Critics 
of   Germany.       In   Great   Britain   we   may   instance  as 
undoubted   members    of   the   Aufklarung   such    men    as 
David  Hume  and  Edward  Gibbon,  but  only  at  the  head 
of  a  cryptic  mass.      In  Germany  the  movement,  as  in 
writers  like  Nicolai,  Mendelssohn,  Baumgarten,  Sender, 
Eeimarus,  and  even  scores  of  others,  was  much  milder 
than    elsewhere,     if     also     considerably     thinner.        In 
Germany,  too,  there  was  speedily  a  reaction  against  it,  as 
exemplified  in  the  pious  spirit  which  reigns  in  the  works 
of  its  Klopstocks  and  Lavaters.     But  what  writers  put 
an  end  to  the  movement,  if  not   generally,  at  least  in 
their  own  country,  were  Lessing,  Herder,  Hamann,  and 
Jacobi — four   men   distinguished    (of     course,    variously 
among  themselves)   almost   by   an  inspiration,  we   may 
say,  not  less  religious  than  it  was  philosophical,  and  not 
less  philosophical  than  it  was  religious.     There  is  not 
one  of  the  four  but  excellently  exemplifies  this.      Lessing 
is  not  an  enormous  genius — he  knows  himself  that  he  is 
not  a  poet,  but  only  a  critic.      For  all  that,  however,  to 
get  the  German  spirit  that  is  peculiar  even  yet,  he  is, 
perhaps,  just  the  very  best  German  writer  whom  it  is 
possible  to  choose.     As  the  truth  for  him  was  ever  the 
middle  between  two  extremes,  so  he  himself  stands  there 
a   figure  in  the   middle  for   ever.       Clearness,   fairness, 
equity  constitute  his  quality.      Living  in  the  time  of  the 
Aufklarung,  he,  too,  would  have  Aufklarung ;   but   the 
Aufklarung  he  would  have  should  not  be  for   his  eyes 
only,  he  would  have  it  for  his  soul  as  well.      It  was  his 
heart    that  would  have   light — feeling — not   mere    per- 
ception.    He  was  not  a  man  that  trusted,  like  so  many 
other  literary  men  of  the  day,  to  himself  and  his  own 
inspiration.     He  was  a  thoroughly  educated  man,  trained 


LESSING JEAN  TAUL.  119 

in  mathematics  as  well  as  in  philology;  and  he  had  read 
deeply.  Even  of  archaeology,  even  of  Church  history, 
he  surprises  by  his  knowledge.  Christianity  is  to  him, 
for  all  his  enlightenment,  the  religion  of  our  maturer 
humanity  ;  and  he  vindicates  for  reason  and  by  reason,  the 
very  strictest  dogmas  of  the  Creed.  To  him  the  unity  of 
Cml  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul  are  truths  demon- 
strable. Yet  he  prefers  the  religion  of  the  heart  to  the 
religion  of  the  head.  He  defends  the  tradition  of  the 
Church  ;  and  yet  he  opposes  the  Christian  of  feeling  to 
the  dogmatist  of  belief,  even  as  he  opposes  the  spirit  to 
the  letter.  He  clings  to  the  rule  of  faith — the  regida 
fidei ;  but  lie  would  as  little  sacrifice  reason  to  faith,  as 
he  would  sacrifice  faith  to  reason.  Still  his  place  in 
theology  is  only,  as  he  says,  that  of  him  who  sweeps  the 
dust  from  the  steps  of  the  temple;  and  his  religion 
proper  is  rightly  to  be  named,  perhaps,  only  the  religion 
of  humanity. 

This  that  I  have  said  of  Lessing  will  dispense  me  from 
any  similar  details  as  regards  the  other  three.  Hamann, 
with  whom  I  have  no  great  sympathy,  is  a  very  peculiar 
personality,  and  has  left  behind  him  certain  pithily  far- 
fetched and  peculiar  sayings  quite  currently  quoted,  while 
both  Herder  and  Jacobi  are  eminently  noble  men,  as  well 
as  great  writers.  The  specialty  that  I  would  attribute  to 
alffour  of  them  is,  that  they  correct  and  complete  the 
Aufklarung  by  placing  side  by  side  with  the  half  on 
which  alone  it  will  look,  the  failing  half  on  which  it  has 
turned  its  back,  and  have,  in  this  way,  done  good  work 
towards  the  reconstitution  and  re-establishment  of  the 
central  catholic  and  essential  truth.  Nor  has  it  proved 
otherwise  with  German  literature  in  general,  and  its 
coryphei  in  particular.  The  example  of  Lessing  and  the 
others  has  proved  determinative  also  for  such  men  as 
Goethe,  and  Schiller,  and  -lean   1'aul.      Neither  on  their 


120  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

part  is  there  any  mockery  or  disregard  of  religion  as 
religion.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  approached  with  sincere 
feelings  l>y  all  of  them,  who  know  it  to  be,  and  never 
doubt  of  its  being,  an  essential  element  in  the  very 
construction  of  man.  It  is  this  that  is  meant  when  we 
hear  of  Thomas  Carlyle  being  directed,  at  one  time  of  his 
life,  to  German  literature  as  likely  to  supply  him  with 
what  he  wanted,  at  once  in  a  philosophical  and  a  religious 
reference.  It  is  this  also  that  he  actually  did  find  there. 
Nothing  else  than  this  made  Goethe  to  Carlyle  a  prophet. 
Speculating  on  this  relation  between  two  men,  in  many 
respects  so  unlike  each  other,  I  had,  in  my  own  mind, 
referred  the  source  of  it  to  that  part  of  Wilhelm  Meisters 
Travels,  where  one  of  the  Heads  of  an  educational  insti- 
tute, conducting  Wilhelm  from  hall  to  hall,  prelects 
equably  on  the  various  religions.  To  read  this  was  a 
new  experience  to  Carlyle.  As  his  early  letters  tell  us, 
the  perusal  of  Gibbon  had  won  him  over  to  the  side  of 
heresy ;  and  any  further  progression  in  the  same  direc- 
tion could  only  exhibit  to  him  Christianity — in  Hume, 
Voltaire,  and  the  Encyclopedists,  say — as  an  object,  not 
of  derision  merely,  but  even  of  the  fiercest  hatred  and 
the  most  virulent  abuse.  This,  then,  as  on  the  part  of 
these  Germans,  was  a  novel  experience  to  Carlyle, — the 
dispassionate,  open  -  eyed,  significant  wisdom  of  such 
tolerant  and  temperate  discourse  even  in  respect  of  the 
Christian  religion ;  and  it  was  as  with  the  light  and  the 
joy  of  a  new  revelation  that  he  returned,  at  least  to  all 
the  feeling,  and  the  reverence,  anal  the  awe,  that  had  been 
his  in  his  boyhood  under  the  eye  of  his  father.  And  so  it 
was  that  the  first  aim  of  Carlyle,  as  in  the  Sartor 
Rcsartus,  was  the  re-establishment,  in  every  earnest, 
educated,  but  doubting  soul,  of  the  vital  reality  of  true 
religion.  In  that  work,  to  such  souls,  wandering  in  the 
dark,  the  light  of  Carlyle  suddenly  strook  through  the 


(AllLYLE. 


121 


black  of  night  as  with  the  coming  of  a  celestial  messenger. 
"  It  is  the  night  of  the  world,"  they  heard,  "  and  still  long 
till  it  be  day:  we  wander  amid  the  glimmer  of  Bmoking 
ruins,  and  tin:  sun  and  the  stars  of  heaven  are  as  blotted 
out  for  a  Beason;  and  two  immeasurable  phantoms, 
Hypocrisy  and  Atheism,  with  the  ghoul,  Sensuality,  Btalk 
abroad  over  the  earth,  and  call  it  theirs:  well  at  ease  are 
tin-  sleepers  for  whom  existence  is  a  shallow  dream. 
But  what  of  the  awestruck  wakeful?"  Ami  thence- 
forward after  this  book  of  Carlyle's  it  was  in  the  power 
of  any  one  who  at  least  would  awake,  to  lay  himself 
down  in  the  very  heart  of  that  awful  "  Natural  Super- 
naturalism,"  to  see,  to  wonder,  and  to  worship  ;  while 
those  mysterious  "organic  filaments"  span  themselves 
anew,  not  in  vain  for  him.  That  was  the  first  mood  of 
Carlyle  ;  and  it  was  his  highest.  He  never  returned  to  it. 
His  Hero- Worship  contains,  perhaps,  what  feels  m 
to  it ;  and  it  is  significant  that  Carlyle  himself  made  a 
common  volume  of  the  two  works.  But  history  and 
biography  occupy  him  thenceforth;  and  in  these,  un- 
fortunately, so  much  of  the  early  Gibbonian  influence,  to 
call  it  so,  crops  out,  that  Carlyle,  on  the  whole,  despite 
his  natural,  traditional,  and  philosophical  piety,  passes 
through  life  for  a  doubter  merely,  and  is  claimed  and 
beset  by  the  very  men  whose  vein  of  shallow  but  exultant 
Aufklarung  is  precisely  the  object  of  his  sincerest  repro- 
bation and  uttermost  disgust.  There  is  a  good  deal  to 
confirm  as  much  as  this,  in  his  Address  as  lev  tor  here  of 
this  University,  especially  in  his  reference  to  "ten  pages, 
which  he  would  rather  have  written  than  all  the  books 
that  have  appeared  sinee  he  came  into  the  world."  These 
ten  pages  contain  what  I  have  referred  to  in  connection 
with  Goethe's  WiUielm  Meister ;  and  I  was  well  content 
to  hear  from  Carlyle's  lips  on  that  occasion  that  1  had 
not  speculated  badly  as  to  the  source  of  his  veneration 


122  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

for  a  man  who,  if  a  prophet  to  him,  might  prove,  on  a 
closer  inspection,  perhaps,  for  all  his  dispassionate  words 
on  religion,  somewhat  of  the  earth  earthy  to  us. 

All  this  will,  pretty  well,  have  made  plain  to  us  what 
the  Aufklarung  is.  Men,  as  I  have  said,  instead  of 
simply  living  blindly  straight  on,  suddenly  opened  their 
eyes  and  turned  round  to  look.  What  they  saw  was 
only  the  old,  and  it  was  not  all  good — as  how  could  it  be  1 
They  revolted  against  it;  they  would  not  believe  a  word 
they  had  been  told;  they  would  see  for  themselves. 
Now,  naturally  what  they  saw  for  themselves,  what 
alone  they  could  see  for  themselves,  lay  without.  What 
was  within  was  what  they  had  been  told,  and  they  would 
not  have  it.  The  result  was  that  the  concrete  man  was 
separated  into  abstract  sides  ;  abstract  by  this,  that  they 
were  each  apart,  and  not  together,  as  they  should  be,  in 
a  vital  one.  What  a  man  saw  and  felt,  experience,  was 
to  be  the  only  truth.  All  was  to  be  learned  and  won 
from  the  examination  of  the  objects  of  the  external 
senses.  And  so,  while  the  outer  nourished,  the  inner 
perished.  The  inner  was  only  superstition,  prejudice, 
unenlightened  prejudice,  and  had  to  be  thrown  away. 
But  the  very  best  of  humanity  could  not  escape  from 
being  included  in  the  cast.  Religion  apart,  no  one,  for 
example,  can  read  the  French  writings  of  the  period 
without  disgust  at  the  flippant  manner  in  which  the  best 
principles  of  morality  are  held  up  for  derision  and  a 
sneer  —  even  the  principles  of  the  family,  say,  which 
are  the  very  foundation  of  the  State  and  of  our  social 
community  within  it. 

Now  it  was  to  this  movement,  certainly  to  the  untrue 
and  shallow  extreme  of  it,  that  the  German  writers 
named  put  an  end.  And  so  it  is  that  the  philosophical 
successors  of  Kant,  all  to  a  man,  speak  of  the  Auf- 
klarung as  a    thing  of   the  past,  as  a   thing    that    had 


NECESSARY  END  OP  A.UFKLA.RUNG.  123 

been  examined,  seen  into,  and  shelved  —  shelved  as 
already  effete,  antiquated,  out  of  date,  and  done  with. 
This,  however,  can  only  be  -aid  on  the  level  of  true 
philosophy.  It  cannot  be  said  at  all  generally  for  the 
mass;  the  mass  at  present  rather  can  largely  be 
contentedly  at  feed  on  the  husks  and  Btubble  of  the 
Aufklarung,  gabbling  and  cackling  sufficiently. 

But,  in  regard  to  Greece,  when  we  consider  that  the 
principle  of  the  Sophists  was  subjectivity  pure  and 
simple,  that  is,  that  truth  as  truth  is  only  whatever 
one  feels,  or  perceives,  or  thinks,  and  only  in  his  own 
regard  for  the  very  moment  that  he  so  feels  or  so 
perceives  or  so  thinks, — when  we  consider  this,  and  that 
the  result  was  only  opposition  to  whatever  had  been 
established  in  law,  or  morality,  or  religion,  «>r  - 
life,  we  must  see  that  the  Greek  Sophists  very  fairly 
represented  what  is  called  an  Aufklarung. 

It  is  not  unimportant  withal  for  us  to  note  that  this 
movement,  despite  these  three  greatest  and  best  men  and 
philosophers,  —  Socrates,  Plato,  and  Aristotle,  who,  in 
absolute  correction  and  refutation  of  it,  followed  it, — 
that  this  movement,  despite  all,  destroyed  Greece. 
Noting  this,  there  may  here,  I  am  inclined  to  say,  be 
a  lesson  for  its.  What,  if  all  this  enlightenment,  all  this 
liberation  from  prejudice,  all  this  stripping  bare  of  every- 
thing in  heaven  and  earth,  should,  despite  our  telegraphs 
and  telephones,  end  in  the  compulsory  retreat  of  the 
whole  of  us — men  and  women  of  us,  after  war  upon  war, 
and  internecine  strife,  and  confusion  limitless — into  our 
original  woods  again!  If  we  will  but  consider  of  it, 
with  all  that  we  are  taught  now  to  believe  ^(  this  uni- 
verse,  such  a  consummation  cannot  be  held  to  be  any 
longer  a  matter  of  mere  dream.  The  subject,  however, 
is  inexhaustible;  illustrations  there  are  to  hand  endlessly 
— in  the  east,  and    the    west,   and    the    north,    and    the 


124  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

south,  and  without  one  exception  of  a  single  human 
interest. 

I  must  return  to  our  theme— the  proofs  for  the  Being 
of  a  ( rod.  In  view  of  what  was  currently  held  in  regard 
to  Socrates  and  the  argument  from  design,  I  had  passed 
over  the  claim  to  priority  made  by  some  for  the  cos- 
mologiea!  argument,  stating  that  it  had  been  usually 
assigned  to  Aristotle.  It  is  in  place  now  to  turn  to 
that  argument,  seeing  that,  in  our  historical  survey,  it  is 
Aristotle  that  we  have  reached.  And  here  I  only  fear 
that  what  presses  on  us  must  enforce  undue  brevity. 

A  form  of  the  cosmological  argument  occurs  in  Locke 
to  this  effect :  "  If  we  know  there  is  some  real  being, 
and  that  nonentity  cannot  produce  any  real  being,  it  is 
evident  demonstration  that  from  eternity  there  has  heen 
something,  since  what  was  not  from  eternity  had  a 
beginning,  and  what  had  a  beginning  must  be  produced 
by  something  else."  That  is  pretty  well  the  argument  of 
Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  too.  Something  is,  therefore  some- 
thing has  always  been,  and  so  on.  The  proper  angle 
of  the  cosmological  argument,  however,  is  dependence. 
What  we  see  around  us  are  evident  effects ;  the  whole 
world  is  but  a  single  scene  of  change ;  phenomena 
follow  phenomena.  Accordingly,  a  German  writer  says : 
"  The  teleological  view  takes  not,  like  the  cosmological, 
its  point  of  departure  from  the  vanity  (Eitelkeit),  but 
from  the  grandeur  (Herrlichkcit)  of  the  world."  But 
that  is  too  much.  Dependence  is  not  exactly  vanity ; 
and  what  is  called  vanity  (Eitelkeit)  in  the  one  argument 
is  really  identically  the  same  thing  as  is  called  grandeur 
(Herrlichkeit)  in  the  other  argument.  The  grandeur  is 
not  vain,  though  it  is  dependent.  The  gardens,  pictures, 
and  statuary  with  which  a  rich  man  surrounds  himself 
are  dependent,  but  they  are  not  vain ;  they  are  a  beauty. 
The  phenomena  of  the  world  are  dependent — dependent 


COSMOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT.  125 

on  noumena  and  a  noumenon,  and  that,  od  the  whole, 
constitutes  the  cosmological  argument  This  argument 
is  often  called  Leibnitz1  argument  ;  but  if  we  call 
Socrates  the  originator  and  founder  of  the  teleological 
argument,  it  is  Aristotle  who  is  named  as  the  originator 
and  founder  of  the  cosmological  argument  And  with 
him  this  argumenl  turns  on  motion.  Whatever  is  in 
motion  has  had  a  mover;  but  we  cannot  go  back  from 
motion  to  motion,  and  from  mover  to  mover,  endlessly ; 
there  must  be  a  final  stop  at  last  where  motion  and 
mover  are  one;  where  what  is,  is  a  self-mover,  which 
self-mover  evidently  also  by  mere  position  is  infinite  and 
eternal.  Motion,  mover,  that  is  caii&a  sui,  cause  of 
itself,  that  is  Clod.  The  aim  of  philosophy,  says  Aris- 
totle, is  to  know  the  truth;  but  to  know  the  truth  of 
anything,  we  must  know  its  cause.  Then  truth  in  the 
cause  must  be  eminently  what  is  found  in  its  effects,  as 
fire,  being  cause  of  warmth  in  everything  that  is  near 
and  nearer  to  it,  must  itself  have  most  warmth.  The 
first  cause,  being  from  nothing  else,  and  always  equal  t>> 
what  it  is,  must  in  its  being  be  the  cause  of  the  h  ing  of 
everything  else.  And  that  there  is  a  first  cause  as 
ultimate  principle  is  evident  from  this,  that  there  can  lie 
no  infinite  series  of  causes,  whether  in  a  straight  line  or 
in  natural  kind. 

"  God,"  says  Leibnitz,  "  is  the  first  cause  of  things  :  for 
all  finite  things,  as  all  that  we  see  and  know,  are  con- 
1  indent,  and  have  in  themselves  nothing  that  makes 
their  existence  necessary,  inasmuch  as  plainly  time, 
space,  and  matter,  each  continuously  identical  with 
itself  and  indifferent  to  all  else,  might  assume  quite 
Other  movements  and  forms  and  another  order.  We 
must,  therefore,  look  for  the  cause  of  the  existen*  i  I 
this  world,  which  is  a  collection  of  things  merely  con- 
tingent, only  in   such   Bubstance  as  has   the  cause   of   its 


12G  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

existence  in  its  own  self,  and  is  therefore  eternal  and 
necessary."  The  angle  of  this  reasoning,  whether  in  the 
one  form  or  the  other,  is,  as  I  have  said,  dependence.  The 
contingency  of  all  things  which  come  within  our  ken  in 
this  universe  is  assumed  as  of  such  character  that,  alone 
and  by  itself,  it  implies  a  necessary  first  cause.  What 
is  contingent  is,  as  contingent,  not  something  ^//-supported, 
,sr//-subsistent,  but  presupposes  something  else  that  is 
such,  or  that  is  in  its  own  self  necessary.  But  now  the 
world  is  contingent,  for  the  world  is  an  aggregate  of 
things,  all  of  which  are  contingent  in  themselves.  There- 
fore  the  world  presupposes  and  implies  an  absolutely 
necessary  being  as  its  substantiating  ground  or  cause. 

Not  only  is  this  being  an  absolutely  necessary  being, 
but,  according  to  Aristotle,  and  still  cosmologically  reason- 
ing, he  is  an  absolutely  actual  being.  And  of  this  reason- 
ing the  angle  is  that  what  is  potential  only  presupposes 
a  preceding  actuality ;  for  to  be  potential  only  is  to  be 
such  as  may  quite  as  well  not  be  as  be.  In  Aristotelian 
terms,  the  irpwTov  klvovv,  what  first  gives  movement  to 
this  world,  must  in  itself  also  be  absolute  functioning  actu- 
ality, absolute  ivepyeia  ;  for  were  it  only  potential,  only 
Suva/jus,  there  were  no  reason,  so  far  as  it  was  only  that, 
that  it  should  become  actual.  What  is  potential,  what 
is  potential  only,  there  is  no  reason,  in  such  quality,  for 
any  step  further.  There  is,  then,  an  actual  God.  To 
Aristotle,  in  fact,  there  is  no  beginning.  And,  for  that 
matter,  I  know  not  to  what  style  of  thinker  there  can  be 
a  beginning — in  the  sense,  that  is,  of  an  absolute  begin- 
ning, of  an  absolute  first.  No  theist  can  assign  a  first 
to  Deity ;  and  no  atheist  can  assign  a  first  to  the  system 
of  things  in  time.  But  where  there  is  no  beginning, 
there  can  only  be  eternity ;  and  that  really  seems  the 
thought  of  Aristotle.  What  is,  is  not,  as  it  were,  a 
straight  line  to  Aristotle,  a  virtue,  a  power,  that  goes 


ME.  DARWIN'S  MISTAKE.  127 

ever  out  and  out,  and  on  and  on.  Rather,  what  is,  is 
to  him  a  virtue  that  returns  into  itself,  a  power  that 
returns  into  itself — so  to  speak,  an  eternally  circling 
circle.  That  is  eternity ;  such  circle,  that  ever  is,  and 
never  was  not,  and  never  will  not  be.  Eternity  is  the 
self-determining  organism  that  operates,  acts,  moves  out 
of  itself  into  itself ;  life  that  feeds  itself,  lives  into  itself ; 
thought  that  ever  thinks,  thinks  itself  into  itself. 

I  omit  much  here  on  the  cosmological  argument,  to 
proceed  to  what  is  plainer.  Aristotle,  it  is  to  be  said,  is 
not  to  he  supposed  as  only  limited  to  the  one  argument, 
the  cosmological.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  be  almost 
held  that,  let  it  be  as  it  may  with  Socrates  and  Plato, 
Aristotle  has  made  the  teleological  argument  expressly 
and  at  full  his  own.  In  point  of  fact,  design  is  the 
central  thought  of  Aristotle  in  his  whole  philosophy 
everywhere.  As  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  it  is  per- 
haps seen  at  its  liveliest  in  the  little  work  of  the  Parts 
of  Animals.  The  general  teaching  here  is  the  same  as 
we  saw  in  Plato, — that  the  element  of  necessity,  physical 
necessity,  concerns  alone  the  external  conditions,  the 
materials;  while  it  is  the  final  cause  that  alone  gives 
meaning  to  them — alone  makes  a  reality  of  them — a 
doctrine — (that  the  mechanism  everywhere  existent  in 
the  world  is  at  the  same  time  everywhere  existent  in 
the  world  only  as  the  realizing  means  of  final  causes) — 
a  doctrine  which,  after  long  struggles,  was  the  final  con- 
viction of  Leibnitz.  Perhaps  for  a  distinct,  clear,  com- 
prehensive statement  in  both  references,  that  is  at  the 
same  time  brief  and  succinct,  there  is  no  more  remark- 
able chapter  in  the  whole  of  Aristotle  than  the  eighth  of 
the  second  book  of  the  Physics.  All,  indeed,  is  so  em- 
phatically plain  in  that  chapter  that  one  can  hardly 
believe  in  the  possibility  of  any  mistake  in  its  regard. 
It  seems,  however,  from  the  very  first  note,  almost  on 


128  GIFFORD  LECTUKK  THE  SEVENTH. 

the  very  first  page,  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  that  Mr. 
Darwin  has  allowed  himself  to  be  misled  into  a  literal 
inversion  of  Aristotle's  relative  meaning.  In  this  note, 
Mr.  Darwin  speaks  thus :  "  Aristotle,  in  his  Physicae 
Auscultationes  (lib.  2,  cap.  8,  s.  2),  after  remarking 
that  rain  does  not  fall  in  order  to  make  the  corn  grow, 
any  more  than  it  falls  to  spoil  the  farmer's  corn  when 
threshed  out  of  doors,  applies  the  same  argument  to 
organization ;  and  adds  (as  translated  by  Mr.  Clair  Grece, 
who  first  pointed  out  the  passage  to  me),  '  So  what 
hinders  the  different  parts  [of  the  body]  from  having 
this  merely  accidental  relation  in  nature  ?  as  the  teeth, 
for  example,  grow  by  necessity,  the  front  ones  sharp, 
adapted  for  dividing,  and  the  grinders  flat,  and  service- 
able for  masticating  the  food ;  since  they  were  not  made 
for  the  sake  of  this,  but  it  was  the  result  of  accident. 
And  in  like  manner  as  to  the  other  parts  in  which  there 
appears  to  exist  an  adaptation  to  an  end.  Wheresoever, 
therefore,  all  things  together  (that  is,  all  the  parts  of  one 
whole)  happened  like  as  if  they  were  made  for  the  sake 
of  something,  these  were  preserved,  having  been  appro- 
priately constituted  by  an  internal  spontaneity;  and 
whatsoever  things  were  not  thus  constituted  perished, 
and  still  perish.'  We  here  see,"  says  Mr.  Darwin  on 
this,  "  the  principle  of  natural  selection  shadowed  forth, 
but  how  little  Aristotle  fully  comprehended  the  principle, 
is  shown  by  his  remarks  on  the  formation  of  the  teeth." 
This  note  of  Mr.  Darwin's  is  not  without  value  in  a 
reference  to  his  own  views.  At  present,  however,  I  have 
not  to  do  with  that,  but  only  with  what  interpretation  is 
given  to  certain  declarations  of  Aristotle  in  regard  to 
design.  And  in  this  reference  it  will  suffice  to  point  out 
the  literal  inversion  of  meaning  of  which  I  speak.  As  is 
well  known,  Aristotle  is  not  always  easy  to  translate,  nor 
is  his  meaning  always  a  clear  one.     I  have  no  hesitation, 


.Mi;.   DAUWIX'S  MISTAKE.  129 

however,  in  saying  that,  in  both  references,  the  particular 
chapter  in  question  may  be  quite  fairly  regarded  as  an 
exception.  It  is  at  once  easy  to  translate,  and  clear  in 
its  meaning.  I  cannot  afford  time  to  it  as  a  whole  now; 
but  I  will  translate  as  much  of  it  as  is  indispensable  for 
our  purpose  at  present.  The  first  words  concern  the  two 
elements,  now  familiar  to  us,  which  both  Plato  and 
Aristotle  describe  as  accompanying  each  other,  and  as 
necessary  to  each  other. 

"  We  have  first  to  tell,"  says  Aristotle  here,  "  how 
nature  exhibits  causality  on  design,  and  then  to  speak  of 
the  necessary  material."  In  the  first  reference,  for 
example,  he  asks,  "  What  hinders  nature  from  acting 
without  design,  but  just  as  Jove  rains — not,  namely,  that 
the  corn  may  grow,  but  from  necessity  (the  condensed 
vapour,  namely,  falling  back  in  rain  on  the  earth,  and  the 
corn  growing  as  only  concurrently  receiving  the  rain)  ?  In 
the  same  way,  if  rain  spoils  corn  on  the  threshing-floor, 
it  does  not  rain  precisely  for  this  end,  that  it  may  spoil 
the  corn :  that  is  only  a  coexistent  incident."  Aristotle 
has  thus  put  the  two  cases,  and  he  will  now  bring  the 
truth  home  by  asking  how  it  is  that,  in  regard  to  living 
organization,  we  cannot  accept  necessity,  but  must  demand 
design.  That  is  really  the  single  import  of  the  whole  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  quotation,  as  a  little  further  translation  will 
at  once  show.  "  What  then;'  Aristotle  continues,  "  pre- 
vents it  from  being  just  so  witli  the  parts  in  nature  ? 
What  prevents  the  teeth,  for  example,  from  being  just 
necessarily  constituted  so  that  the  front  ones  would  be 
sharp  for  cutting,  and  the  back  ones  broad  for  grinding 
the  food  ;  which  would  be,  not  to  be  from  design,  but 
just  to  so  happen?"  What  I  translate  by  this  last  clause, 
"  which  would  be,  not  to  be  from  design,  but  just  to  so 
happen,"  appears  in  Mr.  Darwin's  translation,  "since they 
were  not  made  for  the  sake  of  this,  but  it  was  the  result  <>;' 

i 


130  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

accident."  That  is  a  categorical  assertion  as  on  Aristotle's 
part  of  the  very  opposite  of  what  Aristotle  has  it  in 
mind  to  say.  The  Greek,  however  (eVel  ov  tovtov  evetca 
yeveadai,  dXKa  av/jbireaetv),  involves  no  such  categorical 
assertion  of  an  independent  fact,  but  is  only  an  explana- 
tory clause  to  apply  what  precedes.  So  far  the  whole 
mind  of  Aristotle  is :  Why  should  we  not  say  that  the 
relative  position  of  the  two  kinds  of  teeth,  incisors  and 
grinders,  is  not  an  affair  of  necessity ;  so  that  it  would 
not  take  place  from  design,  but  only  so  happen  ?  Even 
in  putting  this  question  the  opinion  of  Empedocles 
suggests  itself,  and  Aristotle  continues  illustratively  to 
ask,  Why  should  it  not  be  as  Empedocles  held  it 
to  be  ?  Why  should  it  not  be  that,  in  the  becoming 
of  things,  all  such  things  as,  though  originating  spon- 
taneously, were  still  found  fittingly  constituted  and, 
so  to  speak,  undesignedly  designful, — why  should  it 
not  be  that  these  should  be  preserved,  while  those  that 
were  not  so  should  have  perished,  and  should  go  on 
perishing,  as  is  said  by  Empedocles  of  his  fiowyevr} 
avSpoirpaypa,  his  cattle  with  the  faces  of  men  ?  Now  to 
this  question  Aristotle's  direct  answer  is,  It  is  impossible 
that  anything  such  should  be — dSvvaTov  Be  tovtov  e%etv 
tov  Tpoirov.  And  why  is  it  impossible  that  anything 
such  should  be  ?  Why  is  it  dhvvaTov  that  tovtov  Tpoirov 
€%eiv  ?  "  Because  these  and  all  the  things  of  nature 
originate,  as  they  do  originate,  either  invariably  or  all 
but  invariably,  but  of  the  things  of  accident  and  chance 
not  one."  That  answer  is  decisive ;  but  the  bulk  of  this 
single  chapter  has  still  to  come  with  expression  upon 
expression  that  is  confirmatory  merely.  Referring  im- 
mediately here,  for  example,  to  certain  natural  processes, 
his  emphatic  deduction  is,  eaTtv  apa  to  eve/cd  tov  iv  toU 
<f)vcrec  yt,vofjbivoi<;  koi  ovaiv  (there  is  therefore  design  in 
the  things  that  happen  and  are  in  nature).     "  Moreover," 


SOL  dauwin's  mistake.  131 

he  says,  "  in  what  things  there  is  something  as  an  end, 
for  that  end  is  realized  as  well  what  precedes  as  what 
follows ;  as  is  the  action,  so  is  the  nature,  and  as  is  the 
nature,  so  is  the  action,  in  each  case  if  nothing  obstruct ; 
and  as  the  action  is  for  the  sake  of  the  end,  so  also  fur 
the  same  sake  is  the  nature."  Aristotle  brings  in  now 
illustrations  from  the  intentional  works  of  mankind  with 
the  inference  that  if  such  works  are  eveicd  tov,  are  from 
design,  it  is  evident  that  so  also  are  the  works  of 
nature;  for  both  kinds  of  works  are  similarly  situated 
as  concerns  consequents  and  antecedents  in  a  mutual 
regard.  As  illustrations  from  nature  we  have  now,  in 
animals,  the  swallow  with  its  nest,  and  the  spider  with 
its  web ;  and  in  plants  (for  even  in  plants  Aristotle  sees 
such  adaptations),  the  covering  of  the  fruit  by  the  leaves, 
and  the  course  downwards,  not  upwards,  of  the  roots  for 
food.  Consequently,  says  Aristotle,  "  it  is  manifest  that 
there  is  such  a  cause  in  the  processes  and  facts  of  nature  ; 
and  since  nature  has  two  principles,  one  that  is  as  matter 
and  another  that  is  as  form,  the  latter  the  end,  and  the 
former  for  the  sake  of  the  end,  this,  the  end,  must  be  the 
determining  cause."  It  may  be,  Aristotle  continues, 
that  nature  does  not  always  effect  its  end;  but  neither 
do  we  always  effect  our  ends.  The  grammarian  docs  nol 
always  spell  correctly;  nor  the  doctor  always  succeed 
in  his  potions.  And  if  ever  there  were  those  man-faced 
cattle,  it  was  from  some  failure  of  the  principle,  as  may 
happen  now  from  some  failure  of  the  seed.  That,  then. 
nature  is  a  cause,  and  a  cause  acting  on  design — "  that," 
says  Aristotle,  and  it  is  his  last  word,  "is  manifest  — 
<j)avepov."  In  short,  from  its  first  word  to  its  last,  this 
chapter  of  Aristotle's  has  not,  and  never  for  a  moment 
has,  any  aim,  any  object,  any  intention,  but  to  demon- 
strate design  in  nature  and  in  the  works  of  nature.  The 
next   chapter,  indeed,  only  continues   the   same   theme, 


132  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

but  with  more  special  attention  to  the  necessity  of 
material  conditions  in  which  design  may  realize  itself. 
How  Mr.  Darwin  should  have  ever  fancied  that  Aristotle 
first  established  necessity  as  the  principle  of  nature  in 
its  action,  and  then  applied  that  same  principle  to 
organization,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive.  Aristotle  does 
ask,  Why  should  we  not  think  of  necessity  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  teeth  ?  but  it  is  only  that  he  may 
bring  home  to  our  minds  the  palpable  absurdity  of  the 
very  question.  He  directly  says  in  the  de  Partibus 
(iii.  1 ),  "  Man  has  teeth  admirably  constructed  for  the 
use  that,  in  their  respect,  is  common  to  all  animals, 
the  mastication  of  the  food,  namely :  the  front  ones 
sharp  to  cut,  and  the  back  ones  blunt  to  grind."  We 
saw,  too,  exactly  the  same  reference  on  the  part  of 
Socrates.  Indeed,  it  is  difficult  to  think  of  any  more 
striking  instance  of  design  on  the  part  of  nature,  or  of 
one  in  which  there  could  possibly  appear  less  room  for 
the  action  of  mere  material  necessity.  Why,  if  material 
necessity  were  alone  to  act,  we  might  have  our  molars  to 
the  front,  and  how  would  it  then  be  with  our  comfort  at 
our  meals,  or  in  speech,  or  in  our  mere  looks  ?  To  find 
Aristotle  suggesting  the  possibility  of  a  material  cause 
for  the  arrangement  of  the  teeth,  is  to  find  Pythagoras 
arguing  against  numbers,  Plato  against  ideas,  or  Newton 
against  gravitation.  But,  assuming  that,  though  Aristotle 
had,  in  the  translated  passage,  "  shadowed  forth  the 
principle  of  natural  selection,"  yet  he  had  also  shown, 
as  Mr.  Darwin  adds,  "  by  his  remarks  on  the  formation 
of  the  teeth,"  "  how  little  he  fully  comprehended  the 
principle " — assuming  this,  I  say,  we  may  resolve  the 
statement,  as  on  Mr.  Darwin's  part,  into  a  compliment 
to  Aristotle,  on  the  one  hand,  and  into  a  reproach  on 
the  other.  The  compliment  is,  that  Aristotle  was  wise 
enough  to  see  that  what  was  called  design  was  still  due 


EMPEDOCLES  AND  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST.        133 

to  physical  necessity.  And  the  reproach,  again,  is 
against  this,  that  Aristotle  should  have  applied  the 
necessity  just  so,  quite   unmodified,  to  the  formation  of 

the  teeth.  Now,  it  must  be  admitted  that,  if  the  com- 
pliment hail  been  correct,  the  reproach  would  have  been 
correct  also.  Mr.  Darwin  Bmiles  to  himself  in  superiority 
over  Aristotle,  because  he  (Aristotle)  had  missed  his  own 
(Mr.  Darwin's  own)  little  invention,  whereby,  even  on 
physical  necessity,  the  order  of  the  teeth,  designful  as  it 
may  appear,  is  and  must  be  precisely  as  we  see  it.  Ju 
to  that  extent  must  be  done  Mr.  Darwin  even  here.  In 
Mr.  Darwin's  scheme  there  is  really  supposed  a  provision 
for  the  purpose.  Mr.  Darwin  would  have  Laughed  al 
you,  had  you  objected  to  him,  "Then,  in  your  way  of  it, 
the  molar  teeth  might  be  where  the  incisors  are!"  Mr. 
Darwin  would  have  felt  armed  against  that ! 

But  then,  the  absurdity  of  imputing  at  all  to  Aristotle 
the  suggestion  that  organization  was  due,  or  might  be 
due,  to  physical  necessity,  no  peculiarity  of  Mr.  (a-ece's 
translation, not  even  the  questionable  clause  particularized. 
will  excuse  or  condone  that.  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us  himself, 
he  had  Dr.  Ogle's  translation  of  the  d  Partibus,  in  which 
a  note  gives  the  correct  version  of  the  entire  p 
rendered  by  Mr.  Grece.  That  note  occurs  on  the  very 
second  page  of  Dr.  Ogle's  book,  and  must  have  been  seen 
by  Mr.  Darwin.  Nay,  that  very  book,  the  de  Partibus, 
and  as  admirably  translated  by  Dr.  Ogle — that  very 
book,  just  one  argument,  from  end  to  end,  for  design, 
Mr.  Darwin  has  read  with  so  much  consequenl  admira- 
tion of  Aristotle,  that  he  lauds  him  in  excelsis  and  sets 
him  above  the  two  supreme  gods  he  had  previously 
worshipped — Linnaeus  and  Cuvier!  "  Linnaeus  and  Cuvier 
have  been  my  two  gods,"  he  Bays,  "hut  they  were  mere 
schoolboys  to  old  Aristotle." 

I  will  conclude  now  by  pointing  out  how  it  has  been 


134  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTH. 

the  lot  of  Empedocles,  as  early  as  444  years  before  Christ, 
to  anticipate  all,  every,  and  any  theory  that  is  built  on 
the  survival  of  the  fittest.  What  Empedocles  says  is  in 
substance  this :  Nature  brought  forth  and  gave  existence 
to  every  possible  animal  form ;  but  all  such  as  were 
incoherently  and  inconsistently  constructed,  perished — 
and  the  same  process  continues.  That,  surely,  is  to  give 
directest,  precisest,  and  palpablest  expression  to  this, 
Only  the  fittest  survive !  Aristotle  slyly  remarks  here, 
Then  I  suppose  it  was  the  same  with  plants :  if  there 
were  calves  of  the  cow  with  the  countenances  of  men, 
there  were,  doubtless,  also  scions  of  the  vine  with  the 
face  of  the  olive  ! 


GIFFOUD   LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

Aristotle  and  design— Matter  and  form— Abstraction— Trinity— The 
ascent— Tin-  four  causes— A  first  mover — Lambda  of  the  Meta- 
physic  —  The  hymn  of  Aristotle  Speculation  —  Mankind  — 
Erdmann — Theory  and  practice  Nature — Kant,  Byron,  Mme. 
Genlis — Aristotle's  ethic  and  politic— God — Cicero— Time — 
Design— Hume,  Buffon— Plato  and  Aristotle— Immanent  Div- 
inity and  transcendent  Deity — Schwegler — Bonitz — The  soul — 
Unity — Homer — The  Greek  moveiin-nt  up  t<>  Aristotle,  Biese 
The  Germans  and  Aristotle—  Cuvier,  Owen,  Franzius,  Johann 
von  Muller— Darwin— Aristotle  in  conclusion. 

In  the  conclusion  of  the  last  lecture  we  saw  that 
Aristotle,  in  a  chapter  in  which  he  was  supposed  to 
have  shadowed  out  the  modern  doctrine  of  natural  selec- 
tion, had  nothing  in  view  but  the  impossibility  of 
mechanical  principles  ever  explaining  the  phenomena 
which  seem  to  bear  on  their  front  the  relation  that  is 
named  of  final  causes.  And,  in  fact,  to  say  it  again,  the 
whole  philosophy  of  Aristotle  is  founded  on,  and  rises  oul 
of,  the  single  principle  of  an  object,  a  purpose,  an  end  that 
is  good,  an  end  that  is  beneficial,  an  end  that  is  advan- 
tageous. Design  animates  the  whole,  but  the  very  breath 
of  this  design,  the  heart  that  beats  in  it,  the  soul  thai 
guides  it,  is  the  Good — service  that  is  wise.  Nature  is 
but  a  single  organic  congeries — as  it  were,  a  crystallization 
into  externality  of  internality.  There  is  matter  ;  but 
there  is  no  separate  individual  entity  so  named, — cogniz- 
able as  so  named,  existent  as  so  named.  Conceived  as 
such  separate  existence,  matter  is  only  an  abstraction. 
Objects  have  matter,  but   they  have  also   form;  and   the 


136  GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  EIGHTH. 

two  elements,  the  two  sides  are  indissolubly  together, 
though  we  may  logically  see  them  apart,  and  name  them 
apart.  That  is,  we  may  fix  our  mind  on  the  material 
side  of  some  formed  object,  and,  speaking  of  that  side 
abstractedly,  we  may  name  it  apart ;  but  it  does  not 
exist  apart.  Conceived  apart  it  is  but  an  abstraction. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  matter  qua  matter,  any  more 
than  there  is  such  a  thing  as  book  qua  book,  or  paper 
qua  paper :  there  is  always  only  such  and  such  a  book, 
such  and  such  particular  paper.  But  the  other  side, 
already  present  and  immanent  in  the  material  side,  as  it 
were  fused  into,  integrated  and  identified  with  it,  is 
form.  An  impression  in  wax,  so  far,  illustrates  the  idea. 
There  is  the  wax,  and  there  is  the  impress  :  they  can  be 
conceived  apart,  and  spoken  of  apart ;  but  they  are  prac- 
tically one.  You  cannot  take  the  impress  into  your  hand, 
and  leave  the  wax ;  and  neither  can  you  take  the  wax 
into  your  hand  without  the  impress.  Only,  in  the  case 
of  any  Aristotelian  crvvoXov,  of  any  Aristotelian  co-integer 
of  form  and  matter,  the  one  side,  without  the  other, 
absolutely  disappears.  Destroy  the  impress  and  the  wax 
remains  ;  but  destroy  form,  and  with  its  extinction,  there 
is  to  Aristotle  the  extinction  of  matter  as  well.  The 
form  can  exist  only  in  matter ;  the  matter  can  exist  only 
in  form.  Either  of  the  two  sides,  as  separated  and  by 
itself,  is  abstract,  an  abstraction ;  but  in  the  concrete  of 
their  coalescence,  there  is,  as  it  were,  a  life  between  them. 
Even  as  together,  there  is  always  to  be  conceived  a  nisus, 
an  effort  of  matter  towards  form,  a  hunger  of  matter  for 
form  ;  and  there  is  no  less  on  the  part  of  form,  such  nisus, 
or  such  hunger  for  realization,  substantiation  in  matter. 
This  is  much  the  same  thing  as  to  say :  What  is,  is 
potentiality  that  realizes  itself  into  actuality.  We  may 
remember  now  that  reference  in  Plato  to  a  somewhat 
trinitarian  suggestion,  where  the  receiving  element  was 


TRINITY.  13  "7 

compared  to  the  mother,  the  formative  element  to  the 
father,  and  the  formed  element  between  them  to  the 
eicyovo*;,  the  offspring,  the  son.  And  we  may  similarly- 
present  here  the  avvokov,  the  co-integer,  of  Aristotle,  and 
the  life  at  work,  as  it  were,  within,  even  in  its  elements. 
There  is  the  matter  vXrj,  the  form  eiSo-?  or  popcpr},  and  the 
avvoXov  itself,  all  three  respectively  in  a  sort  of  relation 
of  mother,  father,  and  son.  It  is  but  the  same  idea,  the 
same  life,  too,  that  we  see  in  the  further  forms  of  potenti- 
ality, energy,  and  actuality.  There  is  an  ivepyeia,  energy, 
comparable  to  the  father,  that  leads  Svvdfiis,  potentiality, 
comparable  to  the  mother,  into  ivreXex€ia>  actuality, 
comparable  to  the  sou.  This  son,  too,  evidently  combines 
the  virtue  of  both  father  and  mother.  The  eVxcXe^eta 
has  its  own  ivepyeia  in  its  own  Swa/u?.  It  has  its  own 
end,  TeXo?,  within  itself ;  it  is  an  end  unto  itself, — a  life 
that  lives  into  itself,  that  realizes  itself.  And  there  is 
realization  above  realization.  There  is  a  rise  from  object 
to  object.  The  plant  is  above  the  stone,  and  the  animal 
above  the  plant.  But  man  is  the  most  perfect  result. 
His  supremacy  is  assured.  He  alone  of  all  living 
creatures  is  erect  ;  and  he  is  erect  by  reason  of  the 
divinity  within  him,  whose  office  it  is  to  know,  to  think, 
and  to  consider.  All  other  animals  are  but  incomplete, 
imperfect,  dwarf,  beside  man. 

Potentiality  is  realized  into  form,  then,  but  to  effect 
this,  movement  is  necessary.  The  realization  is  move- 
ment ;  and  the  principle  of  movement  is  the  efficient 
cause,  while  of  this  cause  itself  the  further  principle — 
what  gives  it  meaning  and  guides  it — is  the  purpose  of 
good,  the  intention  of  profit,  design  to  a  right  and  lit  end. 
There  are  thus,  as  we  saw  once  before,  four  causes,  and 
generally  co-operant  in  one  and  the  same  subject.  There 
is  the  material  cause,  the  formal  cause,  the  efficient  cause  ; 
and  there  is  also  the  final  cause.      All  four  causes  may 


138  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

be  found  apart,  as  in  the  building  of  the  house.  Here  is 
the  matter,  say  stone,  wood,  lime,  what  not ;  there  is  the 
form  in  the  idea  of  the  architect ;  and  there  are  the 
efficient  causes  in  the  various  artizans.  But  it  is  the 
design  that  sets  all  the  rest  in  motion  ;  and  it  is  the  last 
to  be  realized,  though  also  the  first  of  the  four  that  comes 
into  existence  ;  the  final  cause — namely,  the  comfort,  con- 
venience, pleasure,  the  shelter  and  protection  which  the 
house  is  there  alone  to  afford.  In  such  a  case,  as  we  see, 
material,  formal,  efficient,  and  final  causes  are  all  four 
apart ;  but  in  man,  the  formal,  efficient,  and  final  causes 
are  at  once  and  unitedly  the  soul — the  soul  which  in  its 
body  is  the  master  of  matter.  But  man  is  still  a 
creature ;  of  all  the  creatures  he  is  but  one.  And  of  all 
the  movements  in  the  universe,  and  in  the  things  of  the 
universe,  he  is  not  the  mover.  But  a  mover  there  must 
be.  In  every  movement  that  takes  place  there  are  always 
at  once  moved  and  mover ;  and  for  the  universal  series 
and  system  of  movements  there  must  be  an  ultimate 
mover.  Further,  indeed,  there  must  be  an  ultimate 
actuality.  Potentiality,  were  it  alone,  as  has  been 
already  said,  would  remain  potentiality.  Potentiality 
presupposes  actuality.  Were  there  no  actuality  already 
present,  neither  would  there  be  any  movement  on  the 
part  of  potentiality  into  actuality.  There  must  therefore 
be  a  first  actuality,  and  that  first  actuality  must  be  the 
first  mover,  which,  unmoved  itself,  moves  all.  But  that 
first  mover  and  that  first  actuality  that  is  required  for 
every  other  actuality,  and  requires  no  other  for  itself,  is 
God  —  God  eternal,  increate,  and  immaterial.  Not 
throughout  never-ending  time  was  there  in  night  and 
chaos,  in  darkness  and  the  void,  potentiality  alone,  but 
what  was,  was  actuality:  always,  and  ever,  and  everywhere 
the  infinite  I  AM. 

No  one,  I  may  venture  to  say,  will  read  the  latter  half  of 


THE  HYMN  OF  ARISTOTLE.  139 

the  twelfth  book,  called  by  some  the  eleventh,  by  all,  the 
Lambda  of  the  Metaphysic,  and  yet  feel  inclined  to  repn  >ach 
me  with  hebraizing  Aristotle  here.  If  we  have  not  in 
the  Greek  the  direct  words  of  the  Hebrew  I  AM,  we  have 
them,  every  such  reader  will,  I  feel  sure,  readily  confess, 
fully  in  meaning.  When  we  turn  from  Plato  to  Aristotle, 
it  is  usually  said  that  we  turn  from  the  warmth  of  feel- 
ing to  the  coldness  of  the  understanding,  from  the 
luxuriance  of  figurative  phrase  to  the  dryness  of  the 
technical  term,  from  poetry  to  prose ;  but  to  my  mind 
these  five  chapters  of  Aristotle  are,  at  lead  in  th< nr 
ideas,  more  poetical  than  anything  even  in  l'lato.  That 
irpodTov  kivovv  of  Aristotle,  let  certain  critics  find  what 
fault  they  may  with  it,  is  as  near  as  possible,  as  near  as 
possible  for  a  Greek  then,  the  Christian  God.  And 
Aristotle  sings  Him,  if  less  musically  than  Milton,  still  in 
his  own  deep  way,  musical!?/,  and  in  a  vastly  deeper 
depth  philosophically  than  Milton.  Especially  in  the 
seventh  chapter  of  the  twelfth  book  it  is  that  we  find 
that  wonderful  concentration  and  intensity  of  thought 
which,  deep,  dense,  metalline-close,  glows— unexpectedly 
and  with  surprise — glows  into  song — the  psalm,  the 
chant  de  profundis,  of  an  Aristotle.  It  proceeds  some- 
what in  this  way  : — 

As  there  comes  not  possibly  anything,  or  all,  out  of 
night  and  nothingness,  there  must  be  the  unmoved 
mover,  who,  in  his  eternity,  is  actual,  and  substantial, 
one.  Unmoved  himself,  and  without  a  strain,  he  is  the 
end-aim  of  the  universe  towards  which  all  si  rain.  Even 
beauty  is  not  moved,  but  moves ;  and  we  move  to  beauty 
because  it  is  beauty,  not  that  it  is  beauty  only  because 
we  move  to  it.  And  the  goal,  the  aim,  the  end,  moves 
even  as  beauty  moves,  or  as  something  that  is  loved 
moves.  It  is  thought  that  has  made  the  beginning.  As 
mere  actuality,  actuality  pure  and  simple,  as  that  which 


140  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

could  not  not-be,  God  knows  not  possibility,  he  is  before 
and  above  and  without  potentiality,  the  beginning,  the 
middle,  and  the  end,  the  first  and  last,  the  principle  and 
goal,  without  peers  as  without  parts,  immaterial,  im- 
perishable, personal,  single,  one,  eternal  and  immortal. 
On  him  hang  the  heavens  and  the  earth.  And  his  joy  of 
life  is  always,  as  is  for  brief  moments,  when  at  its  best, 
ours.  In  him  indeed  is  that  enduringly  so.  But  it  is 
impossible  for  us.  For  joy  in  him  is  his  actuality, — 
even  as  to  us  the  greatest  joy  is  to  be  awake,  to  see  and 
feel,  to  think,  and  so  to  revive  to  ourselves  memories  and 
hopes.  Thought,  intellection  is  his ;  and  his  intellection 
is  the  substantial  intellection  of  that  which  is  substantial, 
the  perfect  intellection  of  that  which  is  perfect.  Thought 
as  thought,  intellection  as  intellection,  knows  itself  even 
in  apprehension  of  its  object ;  for  holding  and  knowing 
this,  it  is  this,  and  knowing  and  known  are  identical. 
Intellection,  indeed,  takes  up  into  itself  what  is  to  be 
known,  and  what  substantially  is :  it  acts  and  is  the 
object  in  that  it  has  and  holds  it.  What,  then,  there  is  of 
divine  in  intellection,  that  is  diviner  still  in  its  actuality 
in  God  ;  and  speculation  is  what  is  the  highest  joy  and  the 
best.  And  if,  as  with  us  interruptedly,  it  is  always  in 
felicity  so  with  God,  then  is  there  cause  for  wonder ;  and 
for  much  more  wonder  if  the  felicity  with  God  is  of  a 
higher  order  than  ever  it  is  with  us.  But  that  is  so.  In 
him  is  life ;  for  the  actuality  of  intellection  is  life,  and 
that  actuality  is  his.  Actuality  that  is  absolute — that,  as 
life  of  him,  is  life  best  and  eternal.  So  it  is  we  say  that 
God  is  a  living  being,  perfect  and  eternal.  Life  eternal 
and  enduring  being  belong  to  God.      And  God  is  that. 

That  is  the  great  passage. 

There  are  many  other  passages,  in  several  of  his 
works,  where  Aristotle  returns  again  and  again  to  the 
bliss  of  mere  thinking,  the  joy    of  Oecopta,   speculation, 


MANKIND.  141 

contemplation,  the  joy  and  the  bliss  of  Biayayij,  of  a  life 
that  lives  on,  without  a  change  or  a  check,  in  the 
continuity  of  mere  thinking.  That  to  Aristotle  is  the 
enviable  beatitude  of  the  Godhead.  So  we  can  think  of 
Aristotle  as  loving  to  retire  from  the  world,  always  into 
the  bliss  of  his  own  thoughts.  There  are  circumstances 
in  his  life,  as  well  as  points  in  his  will,  that  show  Aris- 
totle in  a  very  favourable  light  with  regard  to  integrity, 
considerateness,  and  amiability,  whether  as  affectionate 
father,  loving  spouse,  warm  and  constant  friend,  or  good 
master;  but,  perhaps,  experience  did  not  lead  him  to 
have  any  very  high  opinion  of  mankind  as  a  whole.  In 
his  Rhetoric  (ii.  5.  7),  he  speaks  of  it  as  a  position  of 
fear  to  be  within  the  power  of  another,  men  being  mostly 
bad,  timid  for  themselves,  and  open  to  temptations  of 
profit.  And  the  general  scope  of  the  observation  is  not 
a  solitary  one.  So  it  is,  therefore,  that,  perhaps  latterly 
at  least,  his  own  thoughts  in  solitude  were  to  Aristotle 
his  own  best  society. 

This  is  what  Siaycoyij  he  assumes  always  for  tin- 
Godhead  as  7}  aptcTTT),  the  best,  and  the  best  for  us,  too, 
but  alas  !  as  he  sighs,  only  /juicpbv  xp^ov,  only  a  short 
time,  fjfuv,  for  us — the  condition,  namely,  of  contem- 
plative thinking,  of  inward  peace,  untroubled  from 
without,  where  spirit  is  in  the  element  of  spirit,  thoughl 
in  the  element  of  thought,  spirit  in  spirit,  thought  in 
thought.  This,  in  his  Ethic  (x.  7.  12),  is  what  he  holds 
to  be  the  true  life  for  us.  "  It  becomes  a  man,"  he  says 
there,  "  not,  as  some  advise,  being  man  to  think  as  a  man, 
or  being  mortal  to  think  as  a  mortal,  but  to  be  in 
possibility,  immortal  (i<j>  oaov  eVSe'^rat,  as  Ear  as  possible, 
adavaT%eiv,  to  become  immortal,  make  oneself  immortal ) ; 
that  is,  it  becomes  a  man,  as  far  as  possible,  to  lake  on, 
assume  immortality.  Of  course,  it  has  been  pointed  oul 
that  such  life  of  self-absorption  may  suit  the  philosopher. 


142  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

but  not  at  all  the  citizen ;  and,  in  the  same  way,  it  has 
been  objected  that  if  Aristotle  is  a  theist  so  far  as  he 
assumes  or  grants  an  intellectual  God,  he  is  not  surely 
such  so  far  as  he  denies  this  God  the  attributes  of 
practical  action.  And,  certainly,  it  is  with  accuracy  that 
Erdmann,  laying  stress  on  Aristotle  bettering  Plato  so  far 
as  reality  is  concerned,  points,  nevertheless,  to  a  failure  of 
this  practical  element  in  regard  to  the  Godhead ;  mean- 
ing  that  Aristotle  had  secluded  his  God  too  largely 
bo  i  lie  region  of  contemplation.  But,  says  Erdmann, 
Aristotle  "  could  not  have  done  otherwise,  for  the  time  had 
not  yet  come  when  God  should  be  known  as  the  God  that 
took  on  himself  tt6vos,  labour,  without  which  the  life  of 
God  were  in  heartless  ease,  and  troubled  with  nothing, 
while  with  it  alone  is  God  love,  and  with  it  alone  is  God 
the  Creator."  "  It  was  reserved  for  the  Christian  spirit," 
adds  Erdmann,  "  to  see  in  God  at  once  rest  and  move- 
ment, work  and  weal."  And,  no  doubt,  as  I  say,  that 
has  its  own  accuracy.  But  it  is  to  be  said  also  that 
where  there  is  question  of  the  citizen,  Aristotle  does 
not  confine  himself  to  the  joys  of  contemplation,  but 
has  something  to  say  on  the  duties  of  action  as  well. 
Similarly,  then,  let  Aristotle  have  expressed  himself  as  he 
may  on  the  intellectual  aspect  of  the  Godhead,  it  by  no 
means  follows  that  he  deserves  to  be  called  by  such  an 
ugly  word  as  atheist,  because,  when  occupied  with  one 
thing,  he  did  not  turn  his  attention  to  another.  It  is 
impossible  better  to  illustrate  this  than  by  a  reference  to 
the  actual  fact  of  Aristotle's  practical  philosophy.  And 
here  the  mastery  of  Aristotle  in  regard  to  what  is 
sensible  and  sound,  as  well  as  deep  and  true,  will  be 
more  readily  apparent,  perhaps,  than  even  where  it  is 
speculation,  theory,  that  is  concerned.  I  know  nothing 
more  complete  and  cogent  than  what  we  have  from 
Aristotle,  practically,  as  regards  morals  and   the  State. 


NATUEE.  143 

Here  the  question  is,  How  is  man  to  realize  his  life 
individually  and  in  association  •  Man's  growth  is  . 
to  himself  to  realize.  The  principle  in  him  is  Dot  a  mere 
force  which,  as  in  processes  of  nature,  as  in  plant, 
beast,  acts,  bo  to  speak,  in  his  despite,  or  without  consult- 
ing him.  Unlike  processes  of  mere  nature,  unlike  plant, 
unlike  beast,  man  has  his  own  self  very  much  in  his  own 
hands.  He  kuows  that  he  is  from  nature,  he  knows  that 
nature  is  in  him;  but  he  knows  that,  if  only  so,  he  is 
evil  and  the  had.  He  knows  that  he  must  control 
nature  in  him  ;  he  knows  thai  he  must  lift  it,  thai  he 
must  lift  sense  into  reason.  Even  externally  he  knows 
that  nature  is  his  friend  only  if  he  harnesses  it.  He 
must  drive  nature  out — out  into  the  wilderness,  while  he 
remains  himself  in  the  cornfield.  Nature  clamours  and 
brawls  and  storms  around  him  :  bul  he  has  made  himself 
a  hearth  and  sits  by  it.  Nature  fills  the  hollows  of  the 
earth  with  poisons,  or  hangs  them  on  the  tree;  hut  man 
transforms  them  into  health  and  the  means  of  health.  It 
is  somewhat  in  this  way  that  we  may  conceive  Aristotle 
to  regard  man,  wdien  he  approaches  him  to  build  man 
into  manhood,  and  men  into  humanity — man  into  man- 
hood being  the  province  of  ethics,  men  into  humanity  the 
province  of  politics.  How  it  is  that  man  stands  in  need 
of  process  and  progression  in  either  direction  will  readily 
suggest  itself  by  reference  to  what  I  have  said  of  an 
element  of  nature  within  him  and  around  him.  That 
element,  while  it  is  to  be  walled  out  from  without,  has  to 
be  eliminated  from  within.  On  both  sides  it  is  man's 
business  to  convert  nature  into  reason.  No  doubt,  much 
mistake  still  obtains  here.  There  are  those  to  whom  the 
prescript,  Follow  nature,  is  the  open  sesame  of  salvation, 
and  who,  hardly  opposed  by  any  one  in  that  form,  are 
yet  silently  controverted  by  the  unceasing  industry  of 
millions  and  millions  of  hostile  life-points— parasites — 


144  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

without  and  within  them.  So  far  as  religion  is  con- 
cerned, indeed,  there  have  always  been  the  two  allegations  : 
on  the  one  hand,  that  man  is  by  nature  bad ;  and,  on  the 
other,  that  man  is  by  nature  good.  I  daresay  what  has 
been  already  said  will  not  be  far  from  suggesting  the  false 
abstraction  of  either  phrase.  Man,  in  that  he  is  of 
sense,  falls  into  the  danger  of  sense  ;  but  man,  in  that  he 
is  of  reason,  rises  into  the  safety  and  security  of  reason. 
But  both  sense  and  reason  are  in  the  nature  of  man  ; 
and  that  nature  may  be  named  good  or  bad  accord- 
ingly. Nevertheless,  if  either  side  is  to  be  termed  more 
exclusively  nature,  surely  that  side  must  be  sense.  It  is 
when  we  obey  sense  that  we  are  said  to  obey  nature,  and 
when  we  obey  reason  that  we  are  said  to  rise  above  sense 
and,  consequently,  above  nature.  Not  but  that  there 
may  be  legitimate  application  enough  of  the  maxim  or 
precept,  Follow  nature.  That  nature,  however,  means  an 
emancipated  nature,  an  enfranchised  nature,  a  moralised 
nature,  a  nature  that  has  been  lifted  from  the  ground, 
the  blind,  confused  ground  of  the  particular,  and  placed 
on  the  specular  heights  of  the  universal.  In  regard 
to  clothing,  eating,  sleeping,  drinking,  etc.,  there  is  much 
talk  about  following  nature ;  but  if  we  look  close  in  all 
such  cases,  we  shall  find  that  to  obey  nature  as  it  is 
named,  is  to  disobey  nature  as  it  is.  Nature  when  she 
calls  to  man,  with  the  appetites,  vanities,  envies,  and 
sloths  she  has  given  him,  in  regard  to  his  eating, 
drinking,  clothing,  sleeping,  calls  to  him  in  general  "  not 
wisely,  but  too  well."  Immanuel  Kant  lay  down  at 
ten  and  rose  at  five ;  George  Noel  Gordon,  Lord  Byron, 
sat  up  all  night  and  breakfasted  at  four  in  the  after- 
noon ;  which  of  these  men  can  be  most  truly  said 
to  have  followed  nature  ?  Surely  it  was  nature  the 
Lord  followed  when  he  yielded  to  his  own  inclinations, 
and  surely  Kant  had  put  himself  in  bonds  to  reason 


ARISTOTLE'S  ETHIC  AND  POLITIC.  145 

and  against  nature,  when  Lampe  was  obliged  to  admit 
that  his  master  had  never  lain  still  a  moment  Longer 
than  he  was  called.  Not  hut  that,  in  its  overmuch, 
it  was  only  a  kind  of  bastard  reason  that  Kant 
obeyed  after  all!  No  doubt,  it  was  only  some  copy- 
line,  "  early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,"  etc.,  that  Kant 
followed,  as,  indeed,  such  exemplary  copy  lines  were 
everywhere  set  by  the  Aufklarung  at  that  time.  It 
was  in  deference  to  some  such  copy-lines  that  Madame 
de  Genlis,  as  governess  to  a  royal  family,  fed  her  young 
princes  and  princesses  on  bread  and  milk,  and  gave 
them  cow-houses  to  sleep  in. 

But  what  Aristotle  would  have  from  or  for  man 
was,  after  all,  only  his  own  happiness.  Thai  was  his 
highest  good,  he  taught  him;  but,  then,  it  was  not  from 
nature  that  it  came,  but  reason.  Not  but  that  it  was 
true  still  that  nothing  on  earth  could  be  made  happy 
without  consultation  of  its  not  ere.  To  give  success  to 
anything,  we  must  give  it  its  own  swing;  and  to  effect 
happiness  for  man,  we  must  effect  the  realization  of  his 
nature.  But  that  nature,  at  its  truest  and  best,  that 
nature  at  its  realest,  is  not  mere  animal  nature;  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  rational  nature.  And  only  by  being 
put  in  accordance  with  reason  is  it  that  nature  in  man 
can  be  realized.  Reason  is  the  work  of  man,  and  man 
is  to  be  realized  in  his  work.  As  it  is  with  the  flute- 
player  or  the  statuary,  says  Aristotle,  whose  happiness 
lies  in  the  successful  practice  of  his  work,  so  it  is  with 
man  generally.  He  must  have  the  full  exercise  ami 
complete  realization  of  the  ivepyeia,  the  enemy  thai  is 
proper  to  him.  But  when  a  man  accomplishes  this,  he 
is  called  virtuous;  it  is  only  when  he  is  virtuous  thai 
man  is  able  to  realize  himself;  and  virtue  requires  to  be 
developed.  All  the  principles  in  connection  here.  Aris- 
totle  expounds   at    full,   and   in    the    clearest    and   most 

K 


146  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

interesting  manner,  in  his  Ethics,  which  is  essentially  a 
modern  book.  Curiously  analytic  and  telling,  captivating, 
— that  is  the  good  sense  of  the  world,  one  half  of  the 
world's  historical  life  back,  and  it  is  the  good  sense  of 
the  world  still.  A  like  good  sense  we  have  in  Aristotle's 
politics.  If  it  is  man's  virtue  to  realize  emphatically 
himself,  then  is  that  possible  for  him  only  in  the  State. 
Hence  it  is  ours  only  to  live  in  the  sense,  and  feeling, 
and  knowledge  of  what  is  due  to  the  State.  So  living,  we 
shall  be  neither  demagogue  nor  obstructive,  not  a  partizan 
of  self  under  any  name.  But  it  cannot  be  my  intention 
to  enter  into  the  details  of  either  Aristotle's  ethics  or 
Aristotle's  politics ;  it  is  sufficient  that  I  refer  to  their 
interest,  and  their  excellence,  and  their  useful  application 
to  these  our  own  days  and  our  own  experiences.  At  the 
same  time  our  main  object  here  was  to  point  out  by  the 
example  of  his  practical  philosophy  as  respects  man,  that, 
if  Aristotle,  in  one  regard,  seemed  unduly  to  emphasize 
the  bliss  of  mere  contemplation  on  the  part  of  Deity,  he 
might  not  have  been  without  practical  ideas  in  the 
other  regard  either.  He  certainly  seems  to  accentuate 
mere  contemplation  as  the  ultimate  good  even  for  man 
himself  ;  and  yet  there  is  that  vast  and  grand  practical 
philosophy  of  his,  both  for  the  individual  and  the  State. 
So,  even  in  unmoved  contemplation,  it  may  be  that 
Aristotle  does  not  conceive  the  Godhead  to  be  wanting  in 
influence  on,  and  care  of,  the  affairs  of  mankind.  He  has 
such  words  as  these :  Poets  may  lie,  but  God  cannot  be 
envious,  and  neither  is  he  inactive ;  for  man  {Pol.  vii.  1), 
if  he  would  be  happy,  must  act,  even  as  God  acts,  accord- 
ing, namely,  to  virtue  and  to  wisdom.  All  things  for 
Aristotle  are  directed  to  an  end,  an  end  which  is  good,  an 
end  and  a  good  which  are  ultimate — God.  There  is  but 
one  life,  one  inspiring  principle,  one  specular  example  in 
the  whole.    All  is  for  God,  and  from  God,  and  to  God.    He 


GOD  TO  ARISTOTLE.  1  1  , 

is  the  all-comprehending  unity,  in  whose  infinite  I  am 
all  things  rest;  but  he  is  the  ivepyeia,  the  actuality,  also, 
that  realizes  them  all  from  the  least  to  the  greatest. 
Even  should  we  admit,  what  we  do  not  admit,  that  con- 
templation, as  conceived  by  Aristotle,  excludes  action, 
we  would  still  point  again,  in  proof  of  the  purity  of  his 
theism,  to  that  wonderful  hymnic  inspiration  of  his 
wonderful  twelfth  book.  There  is  but  one  idea  in  the 
midst  of  that  inspiration  ;  and  for  the  first  time  to  the 
whole  pagan  world,  for  the  first  time  to  the  whole  great 
historical  world,  it  is  the  complete  idea  of  a  one,  supreme, 
perfect,  personal  Deity.  It  is  for  Greece  ultimate  and 
complete  monotheism.  I  cannot  conceive  how,  in  any 
sense,  the  word  atheist,  with  as  much  as  that  before  us, 
can  even  by  mistake  be  applied  to  Aristotle.  The  trans- 
lator of  the  Mdaphysic  in  Bonn's  Classics,  however,  does 
so  apply  it,  but  in  the  midst,  as  one  is  happy  to  see,  of 
insoluble  inconsistency  and  contradiction.  It  is  in 
reference  to  Aristotle's  attitude  as  regards  what  are 
called  the  moral  attributes  that  the  application  is  made. 
Nevertheless,  in  identically  the  same  reference,  we  can 
read  this:  "It  is  indeed  remarkable  to  find  Aristotle 
thus  connecting  the  moral  attributes  of  the  Deity  with 
what  we  would  call  God's  natural  attributes."  That  is, 
Aristotle  does  give  God  practical  or  moral  attributes. 
Then  elsewhere  we  have  this  complete  characteriza- 
tion: "The  Stagyrite,  therefore,  beholds  in  God  a 
Being  whose  essence  is  love,  manifested  in  eternal 
energy;  and  the  final  cause  of  the  exercise  of  his 
divine  perfections  is  the  happiness  which  lie  wishes 
to  diffuse  amongst  all  his  creatures;  and  this  happiness 
itself  doth  He  participate  in  from  all  eternity.  Besides, 
His  existence  excludes  everything  like  the  notion  of 
potentiality,  which  would  presuppose  the  possibility  of 
non-existence;     and,     therefore,    God's    existence     is     a 


148  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

necessary  existence.  Further,  also,  He  is  devoid  of 
parts,  and,  without  passions  or  alterations,  possessed  of 
uninterrupted  and  eternal  life,  and  exercising  his  functions 
throughout  infinite  duration."  Now,  I  think  it  will  be 
admitted  that  many  of  these  characters  are  of  a  quite 
Christian  quality;  they  may,  for  Aristotle,  be  even  a 
little  too  Christian  ;  so  that  we  may  not  unnaturally 
expect  excuse  for  our  wonder  at  association  with  them 
of  the  word  atheist. 

Cicero  has  preserved  for  us  a  passage  from  a  lost 
work  of  Aristotle's  which,  in  its  bearing  on  the  proofs 
for  the  Godhead,  has  seldom  probably  for  power  and 
beauty,  whether  of  idea  or  diction,  been  either  equalled 
or  excelled.  It  is  thus  (d.  N.  D.  ii.  37)  that  Aristotle, 
as  Cicero  says,  pirieclare,  admirably,  expresses  himself : 
"  Suppose  there  were  a  people  living  under  ground,  but 
in  splendid  domiciles,  filled  with  statues  and  pictures, 
and  all  the  beautiful  things  that  constitute  in  men's  minds 
happiness, — suppose,  too,  that,  though  secluded  to  their 
subterranean  abodes,  they  had  heard  of  some  strange 
power  on  the  part  of  some  unknown  supernatural  beings 
that  were  named  gods, — suppose  then  that  the  earth 
should  open  to  this  people,  and  that  they  should  come 
forth  from  their  darkness  into  the  light  of  day, — then, 
assuredly,  we  must  suppose,  when,  all  of  a  sudden,  they 
saw  the  earth,  and  the  sea,  and  the  sky,  and  the  great 
cloud  musters  moving  in  the  air,  and  the  mighty  sun  in 
the  glory  and  beneficence  of  his  all-pervading  brightness, 
— or  when,  again,  it  was  night,  and  they  saw  the  be- 
spangling stars,  and  the  moon  that  wanes  and  waxes  in 
her  gentleness,  and  all  those  movements  immutable  in 
their  appointed  courses  from  eternity, — then,  assuredly, 
as  we  must  suppose,  they  would  think  that  there  are 
gods  whose  handiwork  all  these  wonders  were/' 

Cicero,  as   we   know,  speaks   of  the  to  us   hard,  dry 


CICERO — TIME.  149 

Aristotle  being  sweetly  and  exuberantly  eloquent.  Flurru  n 
orationis  aur  cum  fund  ens,  pouring  forth  a  golden  flood  of 
declamation:  so  it  is  that  he  pictures  Aristotle  to  us. 
And  it  would  seem  that  Aristotle  really  had  written  in 
that  style  works  which  are  now  lost  to  us.  At  all 
events,  it  seems  true  that,  let  modern  scepticism  as  to 
the  so-called  exoteric  writings  of  Aristotle  be  as  well- 
founded  as  it  may,— it  seems  true  that  he  did  compose, 
in  a  popular  form,  a  dialogue  on  philosophy,  from  the 
third  book  of  which  Cicero  took  his  extract.  And, 
however  all  that  may  be,  it  is  quite  certain  that,  if 
Aristotle  really  wrote  what  Cicero  pretends  to  have 
extracted  from  him,  then  the  extravagant  terms  which 
have  been  applied  to  that  golden  ovatio  of  his  art- 
more  than  justified  ;  for  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that 
the  extract  in  question  is  a  morsel  of  genuine  eloquence 
that  is  at  the  same  time  popular.  The  great  Humboldt 
praises  it  in  his  Kosmos  (ii.  16).  "Such  argument  for 
the  existence  of  celestial  powers,"  he  says,  "from  the 
beauty  and  infinite  grandeur  of  the  Creation,  stands  very 
much  alone  in  Antiquity."  It  is  indeed  magnificent,  and 
reminds  us  of  the  inspired  Psalmist  in  his  deeper  Eebrew 
grandeur.  "  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  ;  and 
the  firmament  showeth  His  handy-work.  Day  unto  day 
uttereth  speech,  and  night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge. 
...  He  hath  set  a  tabernacle  for  the  sun  :  which  is  as  a 
bridegroom  coming  out  of  his  chamber.  .  .  .  His  going  forth 
is  from  the  end  of  the  heaven,  and  his  circuit  unto  the 
ends  of  it :  and  there  is  nothing  hid  from  the  heat  thereof." 
How  all  that  brings  home  to  us  at  once  the  grandeur  and 
the  stability  of  the  universe  !  To  borrow  an  earlier  illus- 
tration. Hundreds  of  years  ago,  thousands  of  years  ago, 
the  Hebrew  bard,  from  the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  as  the 
Greek  philosopher  from  the  streets  of  Athens,  could  look 
up  into  the  night,  and  see  the  stars,  and  the  moon,  and 


150  GIFFORD  LECTUKE  THE  EIGHTH. 

the  clouds,  even  as  we  can.  Ay,  when  the  first  stone  of 
the  first  pyramid  was  laid,  all  was  as  now,  in  man,  and 
bird,  and  beast,  and  earth,  and  heaven.  For  man  at 
least,  civilised  man,  the  world  is  as  it  was  in  the  begin- 
ning These  names  and  dates  by  which  we  would  drive 
God  from  us,  are  names  and  dates,  not  in  time,  but 
eternity.  With  our  scales  and  weights,  and  tapes  and 
measuring-rods,  we  do  but  deceive  ourselves :  what  is,  is 
dimensionless ;  the  truth  is  not  in  time ;  space  is  all  too 
short  for  a  ladder  to  the  Throne.  And  what  we  say 
now,  was  said  by  Aristotle  then.  Custom  hides  it  from 
us ;  but  not  one  of  us  can  go  out  into  the  night  and  see 
the  heavens,  without  asking,  as  Napoleon  did,  but  "  Mes- 
sieurs les  philosophes,  who  made  all  that  ? "  That  is  the 
argument  which  Aristotle,  as  reported  by  Cicero,  makes 
vivid  to  us — the  argument  from  design,  the  proof  in 
Natural  Theology  that  there  is  a  Supreme  God.  So  it  is 
that  he  feigns  his  underground  people  coming  up  to  the 
light  of  day.  And  Aristotle  has  not  been  left  without 
imitators.  "Adam,"  says  David  Hume,  to  whom  what 
was  poetry  was  pretty  well  starch, — "  Adam,  rising  at  once 
in  Paradise,  and  in  the  full  perfection  of  his  faculties, 
would  naturally,  as  represented  by  Milton,  be  astonished 
at  the  glorious  appearances  of  nature,  the  heavens,  the 
air,  the  earth,  his  own  organs  and  members ;  and  would 
be  led  to  ask,  whence  this  wonderful  scene  arose  ? "  We 
have  from  Hume's  contemporary,  Button,  too,  an  account 
of  the  experiences  of  the  first  man  after  his  creation  : 
How,  "  il  se  souvient  de  cet  instant  plein  de  joie  et  de 
trouble  ou  il  sentit,  pour  la  premiere  fois,  sa  singuliere 
existence  ;  "  how  he,  too,  was  astonished  at  "  la  lumiere,  la 
voute  celeste,  la  verdure  de  la  terre,  le  cristal  des  eaux," 
etc.  One,  of  course,  has  little  hesitation  in  finding  the 
original  of  all  that  in  Cicero's  extract,  not  but  that  the 
simple  situation  might  very  well  have  suggested  his  own 


GOD  IMMANENT  AND  TRANSCENDENT.  15] 

picture  to  Milton.  The  one  idea  in  all  is,  how  a  man 
should  feel  when  he  sees,  for  the  first  or  the  fiftieth  time, 
as  a  man,  the  miracle  of  heaven,  and  the  glory  and  beauty 
of  the  earth.     To  Aristotle,  plainly,  it  must  have  brought 

the  certainty  and  the  conviction  that  it  was  not  from 
accident  it  came,  not  from  rv^v,  nor  yet  from  to  avrc- 
/xarov,  the  spontaneity  of  chance.  The  whole  movement 
and  life,  on  the  contrary,  must  be  inscribed  with  the 
words,  end-aim  and  design,  TeA.09  and  ov  eveica.  Nature 
was  not  to  Aristotle,  as  it  was  to  Plato,  the  mere  /*»;  6V, 
the  mere  region  of  the  false.  No,  it  is  to  him  God's 
own  handiwork,  transcendent  and  alone  in  beauty,  and 
wisdom,  and  beneficence.  There  is  nothing  in  it  in  vain, 
nothing  humblest  but  has  its  own  nature  to  unfold,  and 
its  own  life  to  realize.  And  there  is  a  common  striving, 
as  though  in  mind  and  will,  in  all  things  towards  <;,.,! 
who  is  their  exemplar  and  their  home.  Each  would  pro- 
duce another  like  itself,  says  Aristotle,  the  plant  a  plain. 
the  animal  an  animal,  in  order  that,  as  far  as  possible, 
they  too  may  participate  in  the  eternal  and  divine  ;  for 
to  that  all  tends.  And  again,  Aristotle  directly  asks, 
directly  puts  the  question,  How  are  we  to  conceive  this 
eternal  principle  {Met.  xii.  10)  ?  Does  it  exist  simply  as 
the  order  of  an  army  exists  in  the  order  of  an  army 
(which,  as  the  moral  order  of  the  universe,  was  at  one 
time  the  answer  of  Fichte)  ?  Or  does  it  exist  as  the 
general  of  the  army  exists,  from  whom  that  order  pro- 
ceeds? Contrary  to  what  some  say,  Aristotle  answers 
this  question  quite  unequivocally.  And  I  may  adduce 
at  once  here  the  authority  on  the  point  of  the  two  recog- 
nised masters  in  the  Metaphysk  of  Aristotle.  Of  the-,'. 
the  one,  Schwegler,  has  edited  the  text  of  the  book,  with 
wonderful  power  translated  it,  and,  in  two  volumes,  com- 
mentated it ;  while  the  other,  Bonitz,  who,  for  that  and 
much  else,  is  pretty  well    the    acknowledged    prince    of 


L52  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

Aristotelians,  lias  also  edited  the  text,  and,  without  trans- 
lating, but,  with  a  perfect  insight  and  marvellous  sagacity, 
in  admirable  Latin,  commentated  it.     "  The  answer  of 
Aristotle,"  it  is  thus  that  the  former,  Schwegler,  speaks, 
"  is,  that  the  Good  exists  in  the  universe  as  its  designed 
order   and   intelligent  arrangement ;   but   it  exists  also, 
and   in   a   far  higher   form,   ivitliout   the   universe  as  a 
personal   being   who  is   the   ground   and   cause   of   this 
designed  order  and  intelligent   arrangement :   the   prin- 
ciple of  immanence  and  the  principle  of  transcendence  are 
here  brought  together  and   combined  in  one."     As  for 
Bonitz,  he  heads  his  commentary  of  the  last  chapter  of 
the  great  twelfth  book  v/ith  the  words :  "  How  that  which 
is  good  and  beautiful  exists  in  the  universe  of  the  world  " 
— and  he  expresses  himself  on  this  Cjuestion,  as  I  translate 
his  Latin,  thus  :  "  In  regard  to  the  nature  of  the  supreme 
principle   and   its  relation   to   the  world,  whether  that 
principle   as   the  Good  is  to  be   referred  to  the  divine 
nature  of  the  first  substance  or  to  the  order  of  the  world 
itself,  Aristotle  finds  that  the  Good  has  place  in  the  world 
in  both  ways,  the  possibility  of  which  he  illustrates  by 
the  example  of  an  army ;  for  the  commander  is  certainly 
the  prime  source  of  the  discipline  of  the  army ;  but,  if  he 
has  rightly  established  that  discipline,  the  individual  parts 
of  the  army  accord  together  of  themselves.      In  the  same 
way  the  first  cause  of  that  order  which  we  observe  in 
the  world  is  to  be  assigned  to  the  Supreme  Intelligence, 
but  then  the  parts  of  the  world  have  been  so  ordered  by 
him  that  they  are  seen  to  harmonize  of  their  own  accord ; 
for  all  things  cohere  with  all  things,  and  all  tend  to  one." 
In  the  presence,  then,  of  both  these  proofs  and  these  tes- 
timonies, we  must  conclude  that  the  views  of  Aristotle 
in   the   particular   reference  were  very  much  our   own. 
There   was   God   transcendently   existent ;   but  He   had 
created  the  world  in  beauty  and  harmony. 


BIESE  ON  THE  GREEK  MOVEMENT.  1  53 

It  is  in  a  certain  way  in  agreemenl  with  this  that  we 
are  to  understand  the  soul  proper  of  man  to  enter  into 

him,  as  it  were,  from  without.  Aristotle's  own  words 
are  XelireraL  rov  vovv  p,ovov  dvpaOev  iireLaievat  ical  delov 
elvai  /xovou  (d.  G.  A.  ii.  3,  med.).  u  We  are  left  to  con- 
clude that  the  soul  alone  enters  from  without,  and  is 
alone  divine."  The  word  for  from  without  here,  dvpaOev, 
meaning  from  outside,  from  out  of  doors,  is  too  unequivo- 
cal for  any  quillet  to  he  hung  upon  it.  This  soul,  then, 
is  the  self-determinative  principle  of  divine  reason  in 
man,  and  in  it  is  the  immortality  of  man.  The  two 
considerations  cohere:  God,  the  transcendent  Deity  as 
Creator  of  the  universe,  and  man.  in  reason,  as  cope- 
stone,  and  key-stone,  and  end-aim  of  all  Aristotle  is 
specially  emphatic  on  the  unity  of  God.  The  universe 
must  have  a  single  head,  like  any  other  well-organized 
community.  Polyarchy  is  anarchy:  in  monarchy  alone 
is  there  order  and  law,  and  Aristotle  winds  up  with  the 
line  from  the  second  Iliad  :  Ovk  dyaObv  7ro\vKoipavhy  eU 
Kolpavos  €<tt(o.  "Many  masters  are  not  a  good  thing,  lei 
there  be  but  one." 

And  it  is  in  this  way  that  "  Greek  philosophy  has  in 
Aristotle  completed  itself.  Up  to  the  time  of  Anaxa- 
goras,"  says  Biese,  "  the  real  characters  of  objective  exist 
ence  were  the  business  of  philosophical  inquiry.  Through 
him  reason  came  to  be  pronounced  the  principle  of  the 
world;  whereupon,  from  Socrates  onwards,  the  develop- 
ment of  cognition,  as  exclusively  in  tin-  special  subjective 
faculty  of  thought,  occupied  philosophy  :  till  at  lasl  Plato, 
through  and  in  the  Ideas,  returned  to  the  objectivity  of 
cognition,  without  evincing  it,  however,  as  the  power  and 
the  truth  in  actuality.  Aristotle  speculatively  resolves 
the  antithesis  between  reality  and  ideality,  frees  the 
world  of  sense  from  the  character  of  mere  illusory 
appearance,  and  raises  it  into  the  position  of  the  genuine 


154  CIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

reality  in  which  the  Idea  gives  itself  form  and  action.  From 
this  high  position,  to  which  the  philosophical  spirit  of 
the  Greeks  had,  in  and  through  its  own  self,  risen,  Aris- 
totle considers  and  examines  with  interest  the  manifold 
forms  of  reality,  and  takes  up  into  himself  the  entire 
wealth  of  Greek  life,  as  it  has  developed  itself  in  science, 
art,  and  the  State,  becoming  thereby  the  substantial  chan- 
nel through  which  to  attain  to  a  view  of  the  Greek  world, 
as  well  in  its  various  aspects  generally,  as  in  regard  to  the 
historical  development  of  its  philosophy  specially." 

There  are  other  such  testimonies  from  Germans  in 
regard  to  Aristotle.  In  fact,  when  one  considers  the 
enormous  development  of  the  study  of  Aristotle  among 
them  which  this  century  exhibits,  with  the  great  names 
that  belong  to  it,  —  Bekker,  Brandis,  Biese,  Bonitz, 
Schwegler,  Prantl,  Trendelenburg,  Michelet,  Heyder 
Stahr,  Waitz,  Zeller,  and  even  a  whole  host  more, — it 
must  be  evident  that  it  would  quite  be  possible  to  fill 
entire  pages  in  the  general  reference.  Even  in  a  special 
regard,  as  concerns  matters  of  fact  in  science,  there  are 
great  names  in  all  the  countries  that  bear  their  emphatic 
testimony  to  the  ability,  compass,  and  exactitude  of 
Aristotle.  Thus  Cuvier,  for  example,  "  lavishes  un- 
stinted praise  "  on  much  that  concerns  Birds  ;  while  both 
Cuvier  and  Owen  regard  as  "  truly  astonishing "  the 
fulness  and  accuracy  of  his  details  in  respect  to  the 
Cephalopods.  Franzius,  in  that  connection,  and  other- 
wise, alludes  to  the  "  surprising  result  that,  in  many 
references,  Aristotle  possessed  a  far  more  extensive  and 
intimate  knowledge  than  we."  The  celebrated  Johann 
von  Miiller  expresses  himself  in  this  way :  "  Aristotle 
was  the  clearest  head  that  ever  enlightened  the  world  ; 
he  possessed  the  eloquence  of  a  great,  all-penetrating 
understanding,  supported  on  the  direct  observation  of 
experience :  he  is  astonishingly  learned,  and,  in  natural 


ARISTOTLE  IN  CONCLUSION.  1  5  ■" 

history,  compared  with  Buffon,  has  led  me  into  remark- 
able thoughts."  Even,  as  we  saw,  Mr.  Darwin  him  elf, 
who  is  recent  enough,  and,  certainly,  a  special  experl 
enough,  when  he  reads  Aristotle  on  the  Parts  of  Ani- 
mals in  the  admirable  translation  which,  with  its  valu- 
able notes,  had  been  executed  and  forwarded  to  him 
by  his  friend  Dr.  Ogle,  is  obliged  to  cry  out  in  his  letter 
of  acknowledgment  by  return  :  "  1  had  not  the  most 
remote  notion  what  a  wonderful  man  he  (Aristotle)  was  : 
Linnaeus  and  Cuvier  have  been  my  two  gods,  th 
in  very  different  ways;  but  they  were  mere  schoolboys 
to  old  Aristotle."  Aristotle,  however,  is  no  mere 
specialist :  he  is  as  wide  as  the  circumference,  and  as 
the  centre  deep.  The  old  idea  of  him  is  that  he  is  cold 
and  dry,  technical,  practical,  and  of  the  earth  earthy 
only.  But  this  is  not  the  case.  Aristotle  is  even  a 
deeper  mind  than  Plato.  He  may  take  up  thin 
he  finds  them,  or  as  they  come  to  him  ;  but  he  never 
lets  them  go  till  he  has  wrung  from  them  their  very 
inmost  and  utmost.  We  have  to  bear  in  mind,  too, 
that  we  have  lost  five-sixths  of  his  writings,  while  tin- 
best  of  the  sixth  we  have  has  suffered  lamentably. 
For  myself  here,  I  feel  in  this  way,  that,  if  T  were 
condemned  to  solitary  confinement  for  the  rest  of  my 
life,  and  no  book  allowed  me  but  an  edition  of 
Aristotle,  I  should  not,  as  a  student,  conceive  myself 
ill-served.  Perhaps,  indeed,  looking  round  me  to  think, 
I  know  only  three  other  collective  writings  which,  in 
such  circumstances,  I  should  wish  added  to  those  of 
Aristotle;  but  these  I  shall  leave  to  your  own  con- 
jectures. 


156  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTH. 

Professor  Blackie,  after  hearing  the  foregoing  lecture, 
was  kind  enough  further  to  honour  it  by  publishing 
(as  dated)  the  following  obliging  note  and  admirable 
verses  : — 

AKISTOTLE. 

(Lilies  written  after  hearing  the  masterly  discourse  on  the  Philosophy 
and  Theology  of  Aristotle  by  Dr.  Hutchison  Stirling,  in  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  on  Saturday,  23rd  March.) 

Well  said  and  wisely  !  Who  would  measure  take 

Of  his  true  stature,  let  him  choose  the  tall : 
We  all  are  kin  with  giants  when  we  make 

Ourselves  the  big  yoke-fellows  of  the  small. 
Give  me  no  peeping  scientist,  if  I 

Shall  judge  God's  grandly-ordered  world  aright ; 
But  give,  to  plant  my  cosmic  survey  high, 

The  wisest  of  wise  Greeks,  the  Stagirite. 
Not  beetles  he  alone  and  grubs  might  ken, 

Narrow  to  know,  and  curious  to  dissect, 

But  with  a  broad  outlook  he  stood  erect, 
And  gauged  the  planful  ways  and  works  of  men, 

And  owned  the  God  who  rules  both  great  and  small, 

The  soul,  and  strength,  and  shaping  power  of  all. 

John  Stuart  Blackie. 

The  Scotsman,  Tuesday,  March  26,  1889. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

The  Sects — The  Skeptics — The  Epicureans — Epicurus — Leucippus 
and  Deniocritus— Aristotle,  Plafc  -  .  Pantheism— Chry- 
sippus— Origin  of  evil — Antithesis  Negation— Epictetus — The 
Neo-Platonists  [mportant  mx  hundred  years— Course  of  his- 
tory—Reflection at  last — Aufklarung,  Etevolution— Borne — 
The  atom,  the  Caesar — The  despair  of  the  old,  the  hope  of 
the  new — Paganism,  Christianity— The  State— The  temple 
— Asceticism — Philosophy,  the  East,  Alexandria — The  Neo- 
Platonists—  Ecstasy — Cicero — Paley  and  the  others  all  in  him 
— All  probably  due  to  Aristotle — Sextus— Philo  Judaeus — 
Minucius  Felix — Cicero  now  as  to  Dr.  Alexander  Thomson 
and  the  Germans — A  word  in  defence. 

What,  for  philosophical  consideration,  follows  Aristotle, 
are  what  are  called  the  Sects — the  Stoics,  tin •  Epicureans, 
and  the  Skeptics.  Our  subject,  however,  relates  only  to 
the  proofs  for  the  existence  of  God  :  and  we  shall  have 
to  do  with  the  Sects,  consequently,  only  so  far  as  they 
have  any  bearing  on  those  proofs:  it  is  not  the  history 
of  philosophy  that  we  are  engaged  on.  Now,  in  1 
to  that  bearing,  the  very  name  of  the  Sect  may  here,  in  a 
case  or  two,  be  determinative  and  decisive.  Of  them  all, 
in  fact,  it  is  only  among  the  doctrines  of  the  Stoics  that 
we  shall  find  anything  that  bears  on  our  business.  The 
Skeptics,  for  example,  knew  nothing — neither  a  kci\6v 
nor  an  alayjpov,  neither  a  hUaiov  nor  an  aSi/cov,  neither  a 
good  nor  a  bad,  neither  a  right  nor  a  wrong.  They 
knew  not  at  all  that  this  is  more  than  it  is  thai  ;  that 
anything,  in  truth,  is;  that,  in  fact,  anything  is,  any 
more  than  that  it  is  not.     Their  standpoint  was  hroffl'. 


158  CIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

they  would  not  speak ;  or  it  was  afcaraXri^la,  and  they 
did  not  understand ;  or  it  was  ajapa^la,  and  they  would 
not  be  troubled.  It  is  in  vain  to  seek  for  any  argument 
on  their  part  in  reference  to  the  existence  of  the  God- 
head. The  very  best  and  most  advanced  of  them  admitted, 
in  regard  to  anything,  only  a  more  or  less  of  perhaps. 

Nor  with  the  Epicureans  are  we  one  whit  better 
placed.  They  believe  in  no  reality  but  that  of  the 
body  :  they  have  no  test  for  that  reality  but  touch, 
or  sight,  or  hearing — the  ear,  or  the  eye,  or  the  fingers  ; 
and  the  transcendent  object  we  would  prove  is  within 
the  reach  of  no  sense.  As  it  is  written  :  "  Eye  hath  not 
seen,  nor  ear  heard."  In  fact,  Epicurus  directly  tells  us 
that  we  are  not  to  believe  in  design,  but  only  in  the 
movements  proper  of  mere  nature.  We  are  not  to  sup- 
pose, he  says,  the  order  of  the  universe  to  result  from 
the  ministration  or  regulation  of  any  blessed  god,  but 
that,  to  the  original  consequences  of  the  whirlings  to- 
gether at  the  birth  of  the  world  are  due  the  necessary 
courses  of  movement  (Diog.  L.  24,  76).  In  short,  in  all 
such  matters  we  are  to  see  only  a  physical  operation 
{Hi.  78).  Why  Epicurus  will  have  all  from  natural 
causes,  and  not  from  any  influence  of  beings  super- 
natural is,  that  belief  in  the  latter  would  be  the  occasion 
of  fear.  Very  evidently,  Epicurus  has  been  an  ex- 
ceedingly sensitive  person.  For  him  the  best  thing  from 
within  is  calm  enjoyment,  and  the  worst  thing  from 
without  fear.  All  is  useless  and  superfluous  that  does 
not  promote  the  one  and  prevent  the  other.  So  it  is 
that  it  is  cpiite  idle  to  have  knowledge,  as  knowledge 
of  astronomical  phenomena,  say,  since  those  who  have  it 
are  not  led  thereby  to  happiness  ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
have  rather  more  fears ;  for  such  is  the  effect  of  belief  in 
the  action  of  superterrestrial  powers.  But  all  accounts 
of  such  powers  are  only  fables.     Undisturbed  assurance — 


EPICURUS.  1 5  9 

that  is  the  only  end  (ib.  85).  "  Our  life,"  lie  says,  ''  has 
need,  not  of  ideology  and  empty  opinion,  but  of  un- 
troubled tranquillity  "  (ib.  87).  "As  for  the  size  of  the 
.sun  and  the  stars,  it  is,  as  regards  us,  just  such  as 
it  seems"  (ib.  91).  "With  contradiction  of  our  senses 
there  can  never  be  true  tranquillity"  (ib.  9G).  "  It  do 
meteorological  apprehensions,  and  none  about  death,  dis- 
turbed us,  we  should  have  no  need  of  physiology " 
(ib.  142).  But  "death  is  nothing  to  us,  for  what  is 
dissolved  feels  not,  and  what  is  not  felt  is  for  us 
nothing "  (ib.  139).  These  notices  will  be  sufficient  to 
show  the  absolutely  materialistic  nature  of  Epicureanism, 
and  how  it  rejected  everything  like  teleological  agency, 
or  explanation,  and  referred  all  to  the  mechanical  move- 
ments of  mere  corporeal  particles.  In  short,  what  we 
have  from  Epicurus  is  but  a  repetition  of  the  atoms 
of  Democritus  and  Leucippus,  of  whom  Aristotle  (d.  <■'.  A. 
v.  18)  said  that  "they  rejected  design,  and  referred  all 
to  necessity."  It  seems  to  be  they  also  whom  Plato 
(Soph.  246  A,  and  Theaet,  155  E)  has  in  his  eye  when 
he  speaks  of  "those  who  pull  all  things  down  to  earth 
from  heaven  and  the  unseen,  stubbornly  maintaining, 
with  their  insensate  ringers  on  rocks  and  oak  Decs, 
that  only  what  they  touch  is,  and  that  body  and  being 
are  the  same  thing,  while  of  things  that  are  incorporeal 
they  will  not  hear  a  word."  Neither  Skeptics  noi 
Epicureans,  then,  are  here  anything  for  us. 

The  religion  of  the  Stoics,  so  far  as  they  had  a  re- 
ligion, consisted  probably,  on  the  whole,  in  a  sort  of 
clumsy  and  crude  material  pantheism.  Nevertheless, 
unlike  both  Skeptics  and  Epicureans,  they  did  poinl 
to  the  nature  of  this  universe  —  its  contingency  and 
design — as  demonstrative  of  its  origin  in  a  divine  and 
intelligent  causality.  This  causality  is  to  them  a  con- 
scious God,  creative  of  the  world  through   his  own  will. 


1  G  0  GIFFORD  LECTUEE  THE  NINTH. 

but,  according  to  the  necessity  of  law,  in  beauty  and 
in  order  ever — and  as  much  as  that,  in  its  terms  at 
least,  must  be  confessed  to  be  theistic  rather  than 
pantheistic.  The  argument  of  Socrates  is  put  by  them : 
Can  we  fancy  that  there  is  consciousness  in  us — the 
parts,  only — and  not  also,  and  much  more,  in  the  All 
from  which  we  come.  Aulus  Gellius  (vii.  1)  testifies  to 
the  cogency  with  which  the  celebrated  Stoic,  Chrysippus, 
redargued  the  reasonings  in  denial  of  a  Providence, 
because  of  the  evils  in  the  world, — the  reasonings,  namely, 
that  if  Providence  were,  evil  were  not ;  but  evil  is,  there- 
fore Providence  is  not.  "  ^Nothing  can  be  more  absurd," 
says  Chrysippus*  "  than  to  suppose  that  there  could  be 
good,  if  there  were  not  evil.  Without  correspondent  and 
opposing  contrary,  contrary  at  all  there  could  be  none. 
How  could  there  be  a  sense  of  justice,  unless  there  were 
a  sense  of  injustice  ?  How  possibly  understand  bravery, 
unless  from  the  opposition  of  cowardice  ?  or  temperance, 
unless  from  that  of  intemperance  ?  prudence,  from  im- 
prudence, etc,  ?  Men  might  as  well  require,"  he  cries, 
"  that  there  should  be  truth  and  not  falsehood.  There 
are  together  in  a  single  relation,  good  and  evil,  happiness 
and  unhappiness,  pleasure  and  pain.  They  are  bound 
together,  the  one  to  the  other,  as  Plato  says,  with 
opposing  heads  ;  if  you  take  the  one,  you  withdraw  both 
(si  tulcris  unum,  abstulcris  utrumque)."  On  similar 
grounds  Chrysippus  vindicates  or  explains  the  fact  of 
man  suffering  from  disease.  That  is  not  something,  he 
would  seem  to  say,  ordered,  express,  and  on  its  own 
account.  It  is  only  there  Kara  TrapaKoXovOrjacv,  as  it 
were  by  way  of  sequela  and  secondary  consequence. 
The  greater  intrinsic  good  is  necessarily  attended  by  the 
lesser  extrinsic  evil.  If  you  make  the  bones  of  the  head 
delicate  and  fine  for  the  business  of  thought  within,  you 
only  expose  it  the  more  to  blows  and  injuries  from  without. 


NEGATIOX NEO-riATOXISTS.  1 G  1 

"In  the  same  way  diseases  also  and  sicknesses  enter, 
while  it  is  for  health  that  the  provision  is  made.  And  so, 
by  Hercules,  while  by  the  counsel  of  nature  there  Bprings 
in  men  virtue,  faults  at  the  very  same  moment  by  a 
contrary  affinity  are  born."  In  this  way  the  Stoics  have 
put  hand  on  a  most  important  and  cardinal  truth — this 
truth,  namely,  that  discernibleness  involves  negation. 
We  should  not  know  what  warmth  is,  were  there  no 
cold  ;  nor  light,  were  there  not  twin  with  it  darkness. 
Everything  that  is,  is  what  it  is,  as  much  by  what  it 
is  not,  as  by  what  it  is.  The  chair  is  not  a  table; 
the  table  is  not  a  chair.  Negation,  nevertheless,  is  no 
infringement  on  affirmation:  evil  may  he  without  pre- 
judice to  the  perfection  of  the  world.  Evil  in  the 
creation  of  the  universe  was  not  the  design  :  it  is  but 
the  necessary  shadow  of  the  good,  as  the  dark  of  light. 
"Just  as  little,"  says  Epictetus  (Enchiriil.  c.  27),  "as 
there  is  a  target  set  up  not  to  he  hit,  is  there  in  the 
world  a  nature  of  the  bad" — an  independent  bad.  "  In 
partial  natures  and  partial  movements,  stops  and  hind- 
rances there  may  be  many,  but  in  the  relation  of  the 
wholes,  none"  (Plut.  ref.  St.  35). 

The  Neo-Platonists  belong  to  a  much  later  period  than 
the  principal  Stoics;  but,  being  Greek,  we  may  refer  to 
them  here — not  that  we  can  illustrate  the  arguments  for 
the  existence  of  God  technically  from  their  writings,  or  at 
all  further  from  them  themselves,  than  by  their  devotion 
to  God,  a  devotion  which  manifested  itself  in  the  form  of 
what  has  been  named  ecstasy.  This  phase  of  humanity, 
however,  or  of  philosophy,  is  to  be  better  understood  by 
reference  to  the  historical  period  at  which  it  appeared. 

From  the  death  of  Aristotle  in  322  B.C.  to  the  con- 
version  of  Constantine,  or  say,  to  the  date,  more  memorial 
as  a  date,  of  the  Council  of  Nice  in  325  A.t>.,  there  is  an 
interval  of  some  six  hundred  and  more  years.     Now  these 

L 


162  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

six  hundred  years  belong  to  that  period  in  the  history  of 
the  world  when  it  is  probable  that  a  greater  number  of 
civilised  men  were  intellectually  interested,  occupied,  and 
active  than  ever  before  or  since.  The  cause  of  this  was, 
so  far,  politics  without,  and  religion  within. 

The  general  course  in  the  common  life  of  mankind 
seems  to  be  this :  men  are  at  first  hunters,  passing 
gradually,  perhaps,  into  nomads ;  and  intellect  can  assert 
itself  for  many  many  years  only  in  wild  warfare,  crude  art, 
superstition  rather  than  religion,  and  a  dawning  literature 
that  is,  for  the  most  part,  exclamation  or  song.  By  and 
by  the  wanderers  settle  themselves,  and  take  to  agri- 
culture. Agriculture  necessitates  dwelling-places  and 
implements  —  quite  an  assemblage  of  coverings  and 
shelters,  of  goods  and  chattels.  This  assemblage  necessi- 
tates the  artizan  to  make  them  and  mend  them  ;  and  the 
artizan,  to  be  paid  and  to  buy,  necessitates  exchange.  Then 
exchange  itself  necessitates,  or,  in  fact,  is  trade ;  while 
trade,  again,  necessitates  the  town.  Now,  in  this  settled 
life,  what  men  are  to  become  the  leaders  ?  Not  any 
longer,  as  was  formerly  the  case,  necessarily  the  young, 
the  strong,  and  the  bold.  What  is  required  now  is,  so 
to  speak,  counsel,  advice,  direction  in  practical  conduct ; 
and  counsel,  advice,  direction — direction  in  practical 
conduct — belongs  to  him  who  is  tempered,  chastened, 
matured  by  experience ;  enlarged,  enlightened,  and 
enriched,  made  wise  by  actually  living  life's  many  and 
multiform  eventualities.  The  calm  hearts  and  grey  heads 
are  now  the  guides,  and  this  their  guidance  naturally, 
in  expression,  takes  the  form  of  proverbs.  Practical 
sagacity  is  the  crown  of  life.  But  the  faculty  thus 
brought  into  action  is  the  intellect.  Insight  into  results 
and  the  means  of  results,  the  causes  of  results,  is  now  the 
life  of  the  matured  brain.  Every  event  is  canvassed, 
every  proposal  is  canvassed,  with  all  that  appertains  to 


COURSE  OF  HISTORY.  163 

it,  in  the  new  light  that  now  is  ever  spreading,  and  ever 
clearing  around  them.  But  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
science  is  seen  to  have  taken  birth,  and  to  grow.  Step 
by  step  man  learns  to  harness  to  his  own  ends  the  very 
powers  that  were  his  fears ;  and  step  by  step  he  becomes 
presumptuous,  contemptuous.  What  he  feared  is  weak, 
he  finds ;  and  he  that  feared  is  now  strong.  There  are 
cobwebs  all  round  about  him  from  that  old  past  ; 
he  laughs  as  he  thinks  of  them,  and  will  scatter  them 
to  the  winds.  Betimes  it  is  an  age  of  scepticism  ;  and 
bit  by  bit,  politically,  socially,  religiously,  the  whole 
furniture  of  humanity  is  drawn  into  examination  and 
doubt.  And  the  more  they  examine,  and  ever  the  more 
they  doubt,  the  more  their  rebellion  at  the  old  grows. 
Not  a  man  but  issues  from  his  old  wont  as  from  a  bond- 
age and  darkness  in  which  he  has  been  wronged.  He  is 
bitter  as  he  thinks  of  what  is  and  of  what  was.  They 
are  all  bitter  as  they  think  of  what  is  and  of  what  was. 
They  are  in  their  Aufklarung,  and  their  Revolution  must 
come — has  come.  They  rush  with  a  cry  from  their 
corners ;  and,  all  together,  like  a  flood,  they  lay  flat  the 
walls  and  the  roof  that  had  sheltered  and  saved  them. 
For  a  time  all  is  joy,  happiness,  delight,  action,  in  the 
new  light  and  the  fresh  air.  But  presently  the  mood  is 
changed,  and  they  wander  disconsolate  amid  the  ruins. 
They  have  nothing  now  to  come  to  them  and  lift  them 
into  a  life  that  is  common ;  they  have  nothing  to  believe 
in.  They  are  together ;  but  they  are  single,  each  man 
by  himself.  Had  they  been  scattered  down  from  a 
pepper-box,  they  could  not  be  more  disjunct. 

This  is  the  condition  of  the  Sects  and  of  the  atoms 
around  them  ;  for  we  are  still  in  the  ancient  world 
— the  ancient  world  at  its  close.  Everywhere,  at  that 
time,  there  was  the  reality  of  political,  social,  religious 
revolution,  if  not  the  madness  and  violence,  if  not  the 


164  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

blood,  with  which  it  has  been  convulsed  and  dis- 
figured into  hideousness  and  horror  here  in  Europe 
within  a  century.  And  what,  generally  over  the 
known  world,  saved  them  from  as  much  as  that  then 
was  the  shadow  of  a  vast  vulture  in  the  air  that  had  not 
even  yet  filled  its  all-devouring  maw,  and  that,  making 
their  hearts  beat,  suddenly  darkened  and  terrified  them 
into  the  silence  and  stillness  of  an  awaited  doom.  That 
vulture  was  Eome.  Her  prey  was  helpless,  and  she  had 
but  to  seize.  Any  and  everywhere  she  could  stoop  ;  and 
any  and  everywhere  she  could  seize.  The  entire  world, 
within  all  its  bounds,  was  her  booty.  And  with  this  her 
booty  at  her  feet,  the  insatiable  maw  was  at  length 
slutted,  but  not,  even  so,  the  fierce  heart  stilled.  Even 
so,  the  fierce  heart  could  not  be  stilled.  The  one  vulture 
became  a  crowd  of  vultures.  Each  in  the  fierceness  of 
its  own  heart — each  in  its  own  pain,  turned  and  tore  at 
the  other ;  and  it  was  a  distracted  universe  in  fight, 
until  at  length  and  finally,  utterly  worn  out,  exhausted  to 
the  dregs,  they  sank  in  apathy  at  the  feet  of  one,  a  single 
one  of  themselves,  who,  all  too  soon,  drunk  with  solitude 
— the  solitude  of  power  and  of  place — reeled  into  the 
imbecility  and  delirium  of  the  irresponsible,  abstract, 
absolute  self  that  knows  not  what  to  do  with  itself,  nor 
any  more  what  not  to  do — the  realized  Csesar ! 

What  I  endeavour  to  picture  thus  in  these  brief  terms 
is  the  condition  of  the  whole  world  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  six  hundred  years  which  I  have  signalized. 

The  fall  of  the  old  world,  which  was  at  once  political, 
religious,  and  philosophical,  was  characterized  by  a  uni- 
versal atomism.  Politically,  the  individual,  as  an  atom, 
found  himself  alone,  without  a  country,  hardly  with  a 
home.  Religiously,  the  individual,  as  an  atom,  has  lost 
his  God  ;  he  looks  up  into  an  empty  heaven  ;  his  heart 
is  broken,  and  he  is  hopeless,  helpless,  hapless  in  despair. 


THE  DESPAIR  OF  THE  OLD.  165 

Philosophically,  all  is  contradiction ;  there  is  no  longer 
any  knowledge  he  can  trust.  What  this  world  is  he 
knows  not  at  all.  He  knows  not  at  all  what  he  himself 
is.  Of  what  he  is  here  for,  of  what  it  is  all  about,  he  is 
in  the  profoundest  doubt,  despondency,  and  darkness. 
Politically,  religiously,  and  philosophically,  thus  empty 
and  alone,  it  is  only  of  himself  that  the  individual  can 
think;  it  is  uuly  for  himself  that  the  individual  must 
care.  There  is  not  a  single  need  left  him  now — he  has  not 
a  single  thought  in  his  heart — but  ev  irpctTTetv,  his  own 
welfare.  How  he  can  best  take  care  of  himself,  provide 
for  his  own  comfort,  or  as  the  word  was  then,  and,  in 
like  circumstances,  still  is,  secure  his  own  tranquillity, — 
effect  it  that  that, his  tranquillity,  shall  be  undisturbed, — 
this  now  is  the  sole  consideration.  He  becomes  an 
Epicurean,  and  lives  to  sense.  He  lets  his  beard  grow, 
and,  as  a  Stoic,  is  a  king  in  rags.  Or  he  is  the  jeering 
Skeptic,  and  laughs  at  both  at  the  same  time  that  his  own 
heart  is  but  a  piece  of  white  ash.  As  one  sees,  it  is  an  age 
of  what  is  called  particularism,  subjectivity.  Nothing  is 
real  now  but  what  is  particular,  and  particular  for  the  par- 
ticular subject.  Universal  there  is  none.  A  universal  is 
logical,  a  thing  of  the  intellect ;  and  things  of  the  intellect 
are  no  longer  anything  to  anybody.  A  universal  there  is 
none ;  in  that  sense — in  the  philosophical  sense  of  per- 
manent, guiding,  and  abiding  principle,  object  there  is 
none.  That  is,  there  is  no  longer  any  common  object  for 
all  men  certainly  to  know,  for  all  men  certainly  to  believe 
in,  for  all  men  certainly  to  strive  to.  This  that  is  now  be- 
fore us  is  about  the  most  important  lesson  that  philosophy 
can  bring  to  us — the  lesson  that  lies  in  the  antithesis  of  uni- 
versal and  particular,  of  objectivity  and  subjectivity — a 
lesson  that  will  be  found  more  or  less  fully  suggested,  but 
only  suggested,  in  the  Note  on  the  Sophists  in  the  English 
Schwecder.     It  is  such  a  time  as  what  is  now  before  us 


16G  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

that  best  illustrates  this  lesson — a  time  when  the  old  and 
the  new  are  to  be  seen  in  the  deadliest  grips  of  internecine 
battle.  The  phoenix  is  being  burned;  the  phoenix  is 
being  born.  To  the  dying  spasms  of  paganism  the  birth 
throes  of  Christianity  oppose  themselves  ;  and  the  hope 
of  the  new  cannot  but  exasperate  the  despair  of  the  old. 
There  is,  in  fact,  so  far  as  the  prevailing  externality  is 
concerned,  but  a  heaving  welter  of  misery  everywhere. 
The  State  has  perished ;  and  its  organic  cells,  its  magis- 
tracies, namely,  and  other  offices,  are  dens  and  holes, 
mainly,  for  fox  or  wolf,  for  snake  or  worm.  The  gods 
have  fled ;  and  in  their  temples  there  is  only  an 
empty  echo  of  departing  footfalls.  The  world  is  struck 
asunder  and  disintegrated  into  a  mere  infinitude  of 
disjunct  selves — selves  that  must  in  the  wildest  orgies 
rage,  or,  in  the  most  prostrate  asceticism,  crouch.  The 
West,  in  this  its  utter  bankruptcy — religious,  social, 
political, — if  it  looked  around  for  help,  could  only  look 
to  the  East.  There,  at  least,  there  were  still  tales  of 
religious  communication,  religious  acceptance,  religious 
srace.  The  darkening;  mundane  of  the  West  would  turn 
to  what  gleam  there  was  of  a  still  shining  supra-mxmdaiiQ 
in  the  East.  If  philosophy,  that  had  still  words  for  the 
individual,  was  dumb  in  regard  to  all  that  was  universal, 
theosophy  still  spoke.  And  Alexander,  too,  had  flung 
down  the  barriers  that,  on  this  side  and  on  that,  had 
excluded  union.  He  had,  as  it  were,  built  a  bridge 
between  them ;  he  had  founded  a  city,  and  given  it  his 
name — a  city  that,  as  common  to  orient  and  to  Occident, 
became  for  both  the  centre  of  a  new  life.  Here,  in 
Alexandria,  it  was  that  occidentals,  on  the  one  hand, 
were  orientalized  into  a  theosophizing  philosophy ;  and 
orientals,  on  the  other  hand,  were  occidentalized  into  a 
philosophizing  theosophy.  The  conditioning  elements, 
Eastern,  were   Indian,   Persian,  but    especially    Jewish ; 


ECSTASY. 


167 


while,  Western,  they  were  the  doctrines  of  Plato,  Aris- 
totle, and  perhaps,  above  all,  Pythagoras  ;  and,  as  the 
one  tendency  led  to  the  Gnostics,  so  we  can  say  that  the 
other  terminated  in  the  Neo-Platonists.  And,  beside 
both,  there  were  the  so-called  Egyptian  Therapeutae,  who, 
under  Parsee,  Buddhist,  Pythagorean  influences,  largely 
drew,  probably  as  well,  from  the  ascetic  mysticism  and 
cabbalistic  doctrines  of  the  Jewish  Essenes.  If  Ptome 
had  been  a  colluvies  of  outcast  and  fugitive  particulars, 
surely  Alexandria  was  a  conflux,  from  the  very  ends  of 
the  earth,  of  streaming  universals. 

As  regards  the  Neo-Platonists,  then,  with  whom  we 
are  more  particularly  interested,  we  can  see  how  much 
they  are  conditioned  by  the  historical  influences  that 
precede  and  surround  their  rise.  They,  too,  like  the 
Skeptics,  the  Epicureans,  and  the  Stoics,  would  save  the 
individual  from  the  misery  and  unhappiness  of  the 
centreless,  dispersed,  and  mutually  self  -  repellent  life 
that  alone  now  is.  But  this  they  would  effect  by 
ecstasy.  We  are  miserable,  one  may  conceive  them  to 
feel,  we  are  wretched,  we  are  lost  in  this  world,  which 
has  nowhere  a  refuge  for  us,  which  has  nowhere  a  rest 
for  our  very  feet.  What  signifies  the  indifference  of  the 
Stoic,  who  would  conceal  the  serpent  that  still  gnaws 
beneath  his  rags  ?  What  signifies  the  complacency  of 
the  Epicurean,  whose  aching  void  within  no  sensuality 
can  fill  ?  What  signifies  the  jeer  that  covers  the  white 
ash  of  the  Skeptic  ?  Security  so,  salvation  so,  there  is 
none  for  us.  This  wild  soul  of  ours  that  would  know 
all,  this  wild  heart  of  ours  that  would  have  and  hold  all 
— ah  !  we  would  leap  to  God ;  only  with  Him,  on  His 
bosom,  in  absorption  into  His  essence,  can  there  be  satis- 
faction, consummation,  peace  for  us !  This  is  the  sort  of 
rationale  of  the  ecstasy  by  and  in  which  Plotinus  and  the 
other  Neo-Platonists  would  obtain  entrance  to  the  very 


1GS  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

presence  of  God — communion,  as  it  were,  with  His  very 
being.  In  them,  too,  we  see  the  same  loneliness,  the 
same  atomism,  as  in  all  the  rest.  They,  too,  have  turned 
themselves  away  from  the  world.  They  are  without,  any 
longer,  a  nationality.  Native  country  they  have,  any 
longer,  none.  Almost  any  longer  they  are  without  a 
home — without  family,  children,  wife.  All  that  remains 
to  them  still  human,  though  they  say  themselves  they 
are  ashamed  of  their  very  bodies,  and  would  gladly  part 
with  them,  is  the  amiable  vanity  that  meekly  suffers — 
these  disciples  who  will  come  to  them  ! 

Leaving  the  Greeks  for  the  Eomans  now,  it  is  Cicero 
that  will  interest  us  most  in  regard  to  the  arguments  for 
the  existence  of  the  Godhead.  It  is  impossible  for  us 
here  to  do  any  justice  to  the  length  of  treatment  which 
Cicero,  in  his  dc  Natura  Deorum,  bestows  in  particular, 
for  example,  on  the  argument  from  design ;  he  returns 
to  it  there  a  score  of  times,  and  it  reappears  again  and 
again  in  his  other  philosophical  works.  In  fact,  it  would 
almost  seem  as  though  even  a  Paley  had  but  few  supports 
to  add  to  those  already  supplied  by  Cicero,  and  as  though 
what  the  former  had  mainly  to  do  was  simply  to  elabor- 
ate the  latter.  Cicero  follows  design  from  the  heavens 
to  the  earth  and  to  the  creatures  of  earth ;  and  Paley 
does  no  more.  The  sun,  how  it  fills  the  world  with  its 
larga  luce,  its  large  light !  Should  we,  for  the  first  time, 
suddenly  see  the  light,  what  a  species  caeli,  what  a  pre- 
sence the  heavens  would  be  for  us !  It  is  only  the 
custom  of  our  eyes  that  stifles  inquiry  into  the  wonder  of 
such  things.  But  that  any  one  should  persuade  himself 
that  this  most  beautiful  and  magnificent  world  has  been 
produced  by  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms !  As  well 
might  innumerable  scattered  alphabets,  thrown  down, 
take  shape  before  our  eyes  as  the  annals  of  Ennius. 
Who   would  call  him   a  man  who,  seeing   the   assured 


CICERO — PALEY,  ETC.  169 

movements  of  the  heavens,  the  marshalled  ranks  of  the 
stars,  the  harmony  of  all  things  mutually  apt,  should  yet 
deny  that  he  saw  reason  in  them,  and  assign  to  chance 
the  regulations  of  so  great  a  wisdom,  and  a  wisdom  so 
impossible  to  he  reached  by  any  wisdom  of  ours  ?  He 
himself,  certainly,  is  without  a  mind,  who  regards  all  that 
as  without  the  guidance  of  a  mind — all  that  which  could 
not  only  not  be  made  without  reason,  but  which  cannot 
possibly  be  understood  without  the  highest  reason.  From 
things  celestial  Cicero  passes  to  things  terrestrial,  and 
asks  what  is  there  in  these  in  which  the  reflection  of  an 
intelligent  nature  does  not  appear  ?  There  are  the  plants 
with  their  roots,  their  rinds,  their  tendrils,  etc.  There  is 
the  infinite  variety  of  animals  with  their  hides,  fleeces, 
bristles,  scales,  feathers,  horns,  wings,  and  what  not. 
All  of  them  have  their  food  provided  for  them ;  and 
Cicero  refers  to  the  admirable  manner  in  which  their 
frames  are  adapted  for  the  seizure  and  utilization  of  their 
food.  All  within  them  is  so  skilfully  created  and  so 
subtly  placed,  that  there  is  nothing  superfluous,  nothing 
that  is  not  necessary  for  the  conservation  of  life.  The 
progression  of  animals,  the  adaptation  of  their  construc- 
tion to  their  habits  of  life,  their  means  of  defence,  beak, 
tooth,  tusk,  claw,  etc. ;  the  trunk  of  the  elephant,  the 
cunning  and  artifices  of  various  animals,  as  of  spiders, 
certain  shell-fish,  certain  sea  birds,  cranes,  crocodiles, 
serpents,  frogs,  kites,  crows,  etc.  etc. — I  only  name  these 
things  to  suggest  how  much  what  we  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  read  in  Paley  and  the  Bridgewater  Treatises  is 
largely,  or  for  the  most  part  almost  universally,  indeed, 
already  represented  in  Cicero.  Even  the  calculated  con- 
trivances found  within  the  animal,  in  its  anatomical  and 
physiological  system,  are  gone  into  by  Cicero  at  very 
considerable  length  and  in  particular  detail.  In  short, 
the  second  book  of  the  de  Ncdura  Deorum  of  Cicero  may 


170  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

itself  be  regarded  as,  in  preliminary  sketch  or  previous 
outline,  already  a  sort  of  Paley's  Natural  Theology  or 
Bridgewater  Treatise.  In  so  early  a  work  that  would 
base  itself  on  natural  science,  blunders,  of  course,  there 
must  be ;  and  they  are  there  for  the  enemy  to  make  his 
own  use  of  them ;  nevertheless,  I  will  venture  to  say 
that  whoever  reads  this  book  impartially  and  without 
prepossession  will  find  himself  under  a  necessity,  willing- 
ingly  and  generously,  to  express  his  admiration  and 
surprise.  In  fact,  from  various  accidental  vestiges,  it 
may  even  be  that  a  suspicion  will  grow  that  here,  too,  in 
the  main,  it  is  still  Aristotle  that  we  have  before  us. 
The  de  Mando  wholly  apart,  it  is  quite  possible  that,  in 
his  lost  work  or  works  de  Philosojjhia,  Aristotle  really 
did  include  such  embryo  Natural  Theology  that  acted  as 
suggestive  exemplar  to  Cicero.  It  does  seem  that  there 
are  some  slight  hints  to  that  effect  in  the  references  to, 
or  the  actual  quotations  from,  Aristotle,  which  are  to  be 
found  in  other  writers. 

In  Cicero,  for  example,  there  occur,  not  once  or  twice, 
but  several  times,  eloquent  passages  that  lay  stress  on 
the  analogy  between  this  furnished  and  inhabited  uni- 
verse and  a  furnished  and  inhabited  house,  or  an  adorned 
and  decorated  temple  of  the  gods.  "  As,"  he  says  (second 
book,  chap.  5),  "  any  one  coming  into  a  house,  or  school, 
or  forum,  and  seeing  the  design,  discipline,  method  of  all 
things,  cannot  judge  them  to  be  without  a  cause,  but 
perceives  at  once  that  there  must  be  some  one  who  pre- 
sides over  it  and  whom  it  obeys ;  so,  much  more  in  such 
vast  motions  and  such  vast  revolutions,  orders  of  so 
many  and  so  great  things,  in  which  immense  and  infinite 
time  has  found  no  falsity,  he  must  conclude  that  such 
mighty  movements  of  nature  are  governed  by  a  mind." 
In  the  next  chapter  he  says  again,  "  If  you  should  see  a 
large  and  fine  house,  you  cannot  be  brought  to  believe, 


DUE  TO  ARISTOTLE.  1  7  1 

even  if  you  should  see  no  master,  that  it  was  built  for 
mice  and  weasels."  Twice  afterwards,  also  in  the  same 
work,  there  is  allusion  to  this  comparison  of  the  world 
to  a  fine  house  built  for  a  master,  and  not  for  mice. 

Now  there  actually  are  some  signs  in  existence  to 
suggest  that  it  was  Aristotle  who  was  the  original  of  this 
illustration,  and  even  of  its  extension  generally.  Cicero 
himself,  for  example,  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  his 
second  book,  dc  Finibus,  has  this  :  "  They  did  not  see 
that  as  the  horse  is  born  for  the  race,  the  ox  for  the 
plough,  the  dog  for  the  chase,  so  man  (ut  ait  Arisfotelcs) 
is  born,  quasi  mortalcm  deum,  as  though  a  mortal  god, 
for  two  things,  ad  intclligcndum,  namely,  ct  agendum." 
In  a  similar  passage  in  the  de  Natura  Deorum  where, 
instead  of  Aristotle,  Chrysippus  is  the  authority,  the 
two  things  appear  as  ad  mundum  contcmplandum  ct 
imitandum.  Born  for  thought  and  action  before,  man  is 
now  born  for  contemplation  and  imitation  of  the  world. 
It  is  evident,  however,  that  if  the  former  words  were 
those  of  Aristotle  and  the  latter  those  of  Chrysippus, 
these  latter  have  only  been  borrowed  from  those  former. 
But  Cleanthes,  as  his  master,  preceded  Chrysippus  in  the 
Stoic  school ;  and  Cleanthes  shows  traces  of  Aristotle  as 
the  original  quarry  in  these  or  similar  references.  Cicero, 
for  example,  twice  over  refers  to  a  fourfold  origin  for 
the  notion  of  Deity  as — 1.  Presentiments  or  divinations 
natural  to  the  mind  itself ;  2.  Destructive  movements  of 
nature,  storms,  thunder,  and  lightning,  etc, ;  3.  Provision 
and  supply  of  all  things  necessary  for  us ;  4.  The  con- 
stant order  of  the  celestial  phenomena — twice  over,  as  I 
say,  Cicero  refers  to  this  fourfold  origin  of  our  belief  in 
Deity,  and  twice  over  he  refers  it  to  Cleanthes.  Now 
the  inference  is  that  Cleanthes  again  got  this  from 
Aristotle.  There  is  more  than  one  passage  in  Sextus 
Empiricus,   namely    (see    Fragmenta    Hcitz,    p.    35),    in 


172  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

which  it  is  directly  attributed  to  Aristotle  that  he  said 
the  notion  of  a  God  arose  in  us  from  the  phenomena  in 
the  heavens  and  the  experiences  of  our  own  minds 
through  the  communications  of  dreams  or  prophetic 
vision  just  before  death.  There  is  the  remarkable 
passage  we  cannot  forget  in  regard  to  the  feelings  of 
a  subterranean  race  of  mortals  if  suddenly  brought  into 
the  light  of  day  or  the  beauty  of  the  night ;  and  again 
also  there  is  in  the  tenth  chapter  of  the  twelfth  book 
of  the  Metaphysic  that  comparison  of  the  order  and  its 
Commander  in  the  world  with  the  discipline  and  general  of 
an  army,  followed  up  as  it  is  there  by  a  similarly  consti- 
tuted reference  to  a  house  with  its  planned  and  regulated 
household.  The  illustration  of  the  army  will  be  found 
carried  out  at  full  length  in  Sextus,  who  figures  a  spectator 
to  look  down  from  the  Trojan  Ida,  and  observe  the  army 
of  the  Greeks  variously  marshalled,  "  the  horsemen  first 
with  their  horses  and  their  chariots,  and  behind  them  the 
infantry,"  as  Homer  is  quoted  to  say. 

Generally  in  this  reference  it  is  certain  that  Philo 
Judaeus  did  adopt  the  illustration  of  the  house,  carrying 
it  out,  too,  into  considerable  detail.  Of  course  Philo 
Judaeus  was  born  some  fourscore  years  after  Cicero,  and 
might  very  well  have  borrowed  from  him ;  but  being  the 
accomplished  Grecian  he  was,  and  writing  in  Greek,  it  is 
quite  probable  that  he  took  the  illustration  from  a  Greek 
rather  than  a  Eoman  source.  It  is  in  this  way  he 
speaks :  "  Those  before  us  inquired  how  it  was  we 
assumed  the  Godhead,  and  those  who  were  considered  the 
best  of  them,  said  that  from  the  world  and  its  parts,  from 
the  excellences  that  were  in  these,  we  formed  an  infer- 
ence to  the  cause  of  the  world ;  for  as,  should  any  one 
see  a  house  skilfully  constructed  with  forecourts,  porticoes, 
and  all  the  various  chambers  for  the  various  persons  and 
purposes,   he    would   conclude  to  its  builder,  —  for  not 


CICERO A.  THOMSON THE  GERMANS.  173 

without  art  and  an  artist  would  he  suppose  the  house  to 
have  been  completed  ;  and  in  the  same  way  as  regards  a 
city,  or  a  ship,  or  any  other  lesser  or  greater  production  ; 
so  now,  also,  any  one  coming  into  this  vastest  house  or 
city — the  world — and  beholding  the  revolution  of  the 
heavens,  and  the  planets,  and  the  stars,  and  the  earth, 
and  then  the  animals  and  plants,  assuredly  he  would 
reason  that  these  things  had  not  been  constructed  without 
a  consummate  skill,  but  that  the  creator  of  all  this  is 
God."  There  are  other  passages  also  in  which  Philo 
serves  himself  with  the  same  illustration.  We  find  it 
repeated  by  others  after  him,  as,  in  a  remarkable  manner, 
by  Minucius  Felix. 

It  is  now  in  place  to  say  that,  so  far,  we  have  seen 
but  the  two  arguments — that  known  as  the  teleological, 
and  that  other  which  has  been  named  cosmological.  We 
have  still  to  see  the  rise  of  the  third  and,  to  us, 
concluding  argument.  This,  the  ontological  argument  or 
proof,  unlike  the  others,  has  a  Christian  origin,  in  that, 
as  an  invention  or  device,  it  is  due,  namely,  to  Anselm, 
who  died  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  the  year  1109. 
That  is  more  than  a  millennium  after  Cicero.  But  it  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that,  without  any  other  exception 
than  this  of  Anselm's,  already,  as  Cicero  presents  it,  the 
general  argumentation  was  complete.  Paley  and  the 
Bridgcivater  Treatises,  though  writing  it,  so  to  speak,  into 
modern  instances,  really  added  to  the  teleological  argu- 
ment— generally  as  an  argument — nothing  whatever  else. 
That  argument,  as  it  appears  in  the  dc  Ndtura  Deorum, 
may  be  left  on  the  whole  as  pretty  well  finished. 

I  take  it,  we  may  suppose  Cicero's  to  be  good  hands 
to  leave  it  in.  Dr.  Alexander  Thomson  published  in 
179G  a  translation  of  Suetonius;  but  his  principal  object 
in  so  doing,  it  seems,  was  to  give  him  an  opportunity  of 
perorating  in  his  own  way  on  Roman  literature  in  general. 


174  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINTH. 

In  the  course  of  that  peroration  he  has  this  emphatic 
affirmation,  "The  most  illustrious  prose  writer  of  this  or 
any  other  age  is  M.  Tullius  Cicero."  But,  alas  !  even  as 
Dr.  Alexander  Thomson  was  writing,  the  Germans  were 
bent  on  altering  all  that.  For  many  years  back  there 
has  come  only  one  note  from  Germany  as  regards  Cicero. 
The  vanity  and  vacillation  of  the  man,  together  with  the 
interminable  wordiness  of  the  writer,  seem  to  have  set 
everybody  there  against  him — except  the  philologists,  who 
will  have  no  Latinity  absolutely  classical  except  pretty 
well  only  that  of  Cicero  and  Caesar.  I  could  quote 
largely  from  the  Germans  themselves  in  support  of  what 
I  say.  But  a  sentence  or  two  from  Prantl,  whose  word, 
in  consequence  of  his  Eiesenarbeit,  his  giant  labour  on 
logic,  is  pretty  well  authoritative  now — a  sentence  or  two 
from  Prantl,  by  way  of  specimen,  will  probably  suffice. 
Prantl,  indeed,  seems  unable  even  to  speak  the  name 
Cicero  without  disgust.  Cicero,  he  says,  can  certainly 
Schwatzen,  that  is,  jabber  or  jaw.  Then  he  speaks  of  his 
"  entire  impotence,"  and  "  equally  disgusting  verbiage  ; " 
"  Cicero,  in  fact,"  he  says  again,  "  is  either  so  ignorant 
or  possessed  of  such  frivolous  levity  that  he,  the  bound- 
less babbler  that  he  is,  has  the  conceit  to  think  that,  in 
his  three  books,  '  Be,  Oratore'  he  has  brought  together 
the  Ehetoric  of  Aristotle  and  that  of  Isocrates,  although 
it  is  notorious  that  in  very  principle  there  is  an  utter 
difference  between  the  two."  In  a  note  here  also,  he  has 
this :  "  Just  generally,  wherever  Cicero  names  the  name 
of  Aristotle,  the  effrontery  is  revolting  with  which, 
without  the  slightest  capability  of  an  understanding,  he 
presumes  to  enter  a  judgment  either  for  praise  or  blame." 
These  expressions  will  seem  so  extravagant  as  to  defeat 
themselves.  Nevertheless,  the  present  sentence  of  philo- 
sophical Germany  lies  not  obscurely  at  the  bottom  of 
them.     I  fear  we  must  admit  the  vanity,  the  vacillation, 


A  WOKD  IX  DEFENCE.  175 

the  verbiage,  and  the  want  of  either  accuracy  or  depth  ; 
but  still  one  would  like  to  say  something  for  Cicero.  As 
regards  the  Catiline  conspiracy,  for  example,  it  was,  to 
be  sure,  tremulously,  but  still  it  was  truly,  persistently, 
and  successfully  that  he  broke  its  neck.  There  are  a 
considerable  number  of  jokes  too  current  in  his  name,  as 
of  the  Roman  Vatinius,  who  had  been  consul  only  for  a 
few  days,  that  his  consulship  had  been  a  most  remarkable 
one,  that  there  had  neither  been  winter,  spring,  summer, 
nor  autumn  during  the  whole  of  it;  or  of  that  other 
consulship  which  had  been  of  only  seven  hours'  duration, 
that  they  had  then  a  consul  so  vigilant  that  during  his 
whole  consulship  he  had  never  seen  sleep.  These  and 
other  such  jokes  attributed  to  Cicero  are  to  be  found  in 
Macrobius ;  and  I,  for  one,  cannot  believe  that  a  man 
with  humour  in  him  wanted,  like  a  pedant  or  a  craven, 
either  reality  in  his  soul  or  substance  on  his  ribs.  Bather 
I  will  give  him  credit  for  both,  sincerely  thanking  him, 
as  well,  for  his  three  books,  de  Natura  Dcorum. 


The  lecturer  has  again  gratefully  to  acknowledge  the 
honouring  obligation  of  Professor  Blackie's  felicitous 
verses  on  occasion  of  the  foregoing : — 

ATHEISM  AND  AGNOSTICISM. 

(Lines  written  after  hearing  the  Gifford  Lecture  by  Dr.  Hutchison 
Stirling  on  the  Theism  and  Theology  of  the  Stoics,  Cicero,awl  th  A'-  - 
Platonists,  last  Saturday  in  the  University.) 

All  hail,  once  more  !  when  nonsense  walks  abroad, 

A  word  of  sense  is  music  to  the  ear 
Vexed  with  the  jar  of  fools  who  find  no  God 

In  all  the  starry  scutcheon  of  the  sphere 
Outside  their  peeping  view  and  fingering  pains, 

And  with  the  measure  of  their  crude  conceit 
Would  span  the  Infinite.    Where  Buch  doctrine  reigns 

Let  blind  men  ride  Mind  horses  through  the  street  : 


17G  GIFFOED  LECTUBE  THE  NINTH. 

I'll  none  of  it.     Give  me  the  good  old  Psalm  x 

King  David  sang,  and  held  it  deadly  sin 
To  doubt  the  working  of  the  great  I  AM 

In  Heaven  above,  and  voice  of  law  within. 
Where'er  we  turn,  from  earth,  and  sea,  and  sky, 
God's  glory  streams  to  stir  the  seeing  eye. 

John  Stuart  Blackie. 

1  Psalm  xix.,  which  subsumes  under  one  category  of  intelligent 
reverence  the  physical  law  without,  and  the  moral  law  within,  and 
thus  avoids  the  error  of  certain  modern  specialists,  who  see  only 
what  can  can  be  seen  in  the  limited  field  of  their  occupation. 

J.  S.  B. 

The  Scotsman,  Fridaij,  April  5,  1889. 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

Cicero— To  Anselm — The  Fathers — Seneca,  Pliny,  Tacitus — God  to 
the  early  Fathers — Common  consent  in  the  individual  and  the 
race  —  Cicero  —  Irenaeus,  Tertullian,  Chrysostom,  Arnobius, 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  Lactantius,  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  Julian, 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  and  others,  Athanasius  —  Reid,  religion, 
superstition — The  Bible— F.  C.  Baur — Anselm— His  argument 
— The  College  Essay  of  1838— Dr.  Fleming — Illustrations  from 
the  essay—  Gaunilo — Mr.  Lewes — Ueberweg,  Erdmann,  Hegel 
— The  Monologium— Augustine  and  Boethius — The  Proslogium 
— Finite  and  infinite  —  What  the  argument  really  means  — 
Descartes — Knowledge  and  belief. 

With  Cicero  we  reached  in  our  course  a  most  important 
and  critical  halting-place.  As  we  have  seen,  he  is  even 
to  be  regarded  as  constituting,  in  respect  of  the  older 
proofs,  the  quarry  for  the  argumentation  of  the  future. 
Henceforth,  his  works,  indeed,  are  a  perfect  vallee  de  la 
Somme,  not  for  celts,  flint-axes,  but  for  topics  of  dis- 
course. We  have  still,  in  the  general  reference  other- 
wise, to  wait  those  thousand  years  yet  before  Anselm 
shall  arrive  with  what  is  to  be  named  the  new  proof,  the 
proof  ontological,  and  during  the  entire  interval  it  is  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church  and  their  immediate  followers 
who,  in  repetition  of  the  old,  or  suggestion  of  the  new, 
connect  thinker  with  thinker,  philosopher  with  philo- 
sopher, pagan  with  Christian.  Before  coming  to  Anselm, 
then,  it  is  to  the  Fathers  that  we  must  interimistically 
pass.  A  word  or  two  may  be  found  in  some  few  inter- 
vening writers,  as  Seneca,  perhaps,  or  Pliny,  or  even 
Tacitus ;    but    the    respective   relevancy  is   unimportant. 

M 


178  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

Seneca  is  a  specious  writer,  with  a  certain  inviting  ease, 
as  well  as  a  certain  attractive  modernness  of  moral  and 
religious  tone  about  him,  all  of  which  probably  he  has  to 
thank  for  the  favour  that  made  him  an  authoritative 
teacher  during  many  centuries.  But  his  lesson  is  seen 
pretty  well  now  to  be  merely  skin  deep,  and  he  is, 
accordingly,  I  suppose  on  the  whole,  for  the  most  part 
neglected.  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  I  fancy,  is  about  the  last 
writer  of  repute  that  takes  much  note  of  him.  Brown, 
ore  rotundo,  does  indeed  declaim,  at  considerable  length 
too,  in  Seneca's  glib,  loose  Latin,  from  his  very  first 
lecture  even  to  his  very  last ;  but  then  we  must  consider 
the  temptation,  as  well  of  the  convenience,  it  may  be,  as 
of  the  ornament.  Aulus  Gellius  assigns  to  Seneca  a 
diction  that  is  only  vulgar  and  trivial,  and  a  judicium 
that  is  but  leve  andftitile.  He  is  in  place  here  only  in 
consequence  of  the  frequency  with  which  he  recurs  to 
the  idea  of  God :  "  Prope  a  te  Deus  est,  tecum  est,  intus 
est ;  Deus  ad  homines  venit ;  immo,  quod  propius  est,  in 
homines."  That  is  not  badly  said,  but  is  it  more  than 
said  ?  One  reflects  on  Seneca's  laeta  paupcrtas  of  speech 
while  in  midst  of  the  luxury  of  fact,  and  on  the  con- 
sequent meek  self-sacrifice  with  which  he  expatiates  on 
the  posse  path  divitias  !  The  elder  Pliny  is,  as  his  time  is, 
quite  philosophical  in  regard  to  the  gods ;  but  he  is 
evidently  deeply  impressed  by  the  spectacle  of  the  uni- 
verse, of  which  there  can  be  but  one  God,  he  thinks  ;  who 
is  "  all  sense,  all  sight,  all  hearing,  all  life,  all  mind,  and 
all  within  himself,"  and  that,  in  terms  at  least,  is  the 
One,  Personal,  Omniscient,  and  Omnipotent  Deity,  whom 
we  ourselves  think.  Tacitus  is  later  than  Pliny,  and  his 
judgment  is  in  uncertainty,  he  admits,  whether  the  affairs 
of  mortals  are  under  the  determination  of  a  Providence  or 
at  the  disposal  of  chance.  The  chapter,  the  22nd  of  the 
sixth  book  of  the  Annals,  is  a  remarkable  one. 


THE  FATHERS.  170 

What  strikes  us  first  in  the  early  Christian  writers  in 
this  reference  is  the  frequency  with  which  they  employ 
that  argument  that  is  known  as  the  Consensus  Gentium. 
Nor  is  this  strange.  There  came  to  these  pagans  with 
Christianity  then  the  awful  form  of  the  majestic  Jehovah, 
I  Am  that  I  Am,  whom  German  and  French  writers 
have  taken  of  late,  degradingly,  I  suppose,  familiarizingly, 
to  call  Jahve.  But  under  whatever  name,  He  came  for 
the  first  time  then  to  those  we  call  the  ancients,  as  the 
Almighty  God  of  this  vast  universe,  the  Creator,  Maker, 
Sustainer,  and  Preserver;  the  power  that  is  for  ever 
present  with  us,  to  note  and  know,  to  bless  or  to  punish. 
This  was  the  one  great  mightiness,  the  mystic,  here  and 
now  present  awfulness  with  whom,  to  overwhelm,  to 
crush,  and  destroy,  the  early  Christians  confronted  the 
loose  rabble  of  the  polytheistic  deities,  the  abstract  null 
of  Neo-Platonic  emanation,  and  the  gloomy  daemons  of 
the  wildly  heretical  Gnosis.  This  was  He  of  whom 
Job  spoke,  of  whom  the  Psalmist  sung,  with  whose 
wrath  the  Prophets  thunderstruck  the  sinner.  That 
this  God  was,  that  this  God  alone  was,  there  was,  on  the 
part  of  the  Fathers,  a  universal  appeal,  as  well  to  the 
common  experience  of  the  nations  historically,  as  to  the 
very  heart  and  inmost  conscience  of  the  natural  man. 
Cicero  was  quoted  in  many  texts,  as  that,  among  men, 
there  is  no  nation  so  immansucta  and  so  /era  as  not  to 
know  that  there  is  a  God.  This  is  a  truth  which  seems 
to  have  been  insisted  on  by  all  the  Fathers,  from  the  first 
to  the  last.  Man,  they  say,  is  in  his  nature  endowed  by 
the  Creator  with  such  capabilities  and  powers  that,  as  soon 
as  he  attains  to  the  use  of  reason, he,  of  himself,  and  with- 
out instruction,  recognises  the  truth  of  a  God,  and  divine 
things,  and  moral  action.  That  is  the  true  light,  which 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world  (John  i.  9). 
"  All  know  this,"  says  Irenaeus,  "  that  there  is  one  God, 


ISO  GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  TENTH. 

the  Lord  of  all;  for  reason,  that  dwells  in  the  spirit,  reveals 
it."  Tertnllian  has  a  remarkable  work  named  Be  testi- 
monio  animae  naturaliter  Christianae  (Of  the  testimony  of 
the  soul  as  naturally  Christian),  in  which  there  occur 
many  striking  passages  in  regard  to  the  testimony  of  the 
soul  itself,  as,  even  from  the  first,  and  by  mere  nature, 
Christian.  He  calls  it  "  an  original  testimony,  more 
familiar  than  all  writing,  more  current  than  all  doctrine, 
wider  spread  than  every  communication,  greater  than  the 
whole  man.  .  .  .  The  conscience  of  the  soul  is  from  the 
beginning  a  gift  of  God,"  and  that  there  is  a  God  is  a 
"  teaching  of  nature  silently  committed  to  the  conscience, 
that  is  born  with,  and  born  in  us."  God  from  the 
beginning  laid  in  man  the  natural  law,  says  Chrysostom. 
Arnobius  asks,  "  What  man  is  there  who  has  not  begun  the 
first  day  of  his  nativity  with  this  principle ;  in  whom  it 
is  not  inborn,  fixed,  almost  even  impressed  upon  him, 
implanted  in  him  while  still  in  the  bosom  of  his  mother  ?  " 
"  Among  all  mankind,"  says  Clement  of  Alexandria, "  Greek 
or  barbarian,  there  are  none  anywhere  upon  the  earth, 
neither  of  those  who  wander,  nor  of  those  who  are  settled, 
that  are  not  pre-impressed  with  the  conviction  of  a  supreme 
being.  And  so  it  is  that  every  nation,  whether  in  the  east, 
or  opposite  in  the  west,  in  the  north,  or  in  the  south,  has 
one  and  the  same  belief,  from  the  beginning  in  the 
sovereignty  of  Him  who  has  created  this  world ;  the 
very  utmost  of  whose  power  extends  equally  everywhere 
within  it."  "  Man  cannot  divest  himself  of  the  idea  of 
God,"  is  the  averment  of  Lactantius ;  "  his  spontaneous 
turning  to  Him  in  every  need,  his  involuntary  exclama- 
tions, prove  it : — the  truth,  on  compulsion  of  nature,  bursts 
from  his  bosom  in  its  own  despite."  To  Cyril  of  Alexan- 
dria to  elSevai  deov,  the  knowing  of  God,  is  dSiSafcrov  tl 
XPVfia  vol  avTOfjLadl<i,  an  untaught  thing,  and  self-acquired ; 
and  he  even  quotes  the  Apostate  Julian  to  the  effect  that 


COMMON  CONSENT.  181 

the  proof  of  this  is  the  fact  that  "  to  all  mankind,  as  well 
in  public  as  in  private  life,  to  single  individuals  as  to 
entire  peoples,  the  feeling  fur  divine  things  is  universal; 
for  even  without  teaching  we  all  believe  in  a  Supreme 
Being."  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  Eusebius  of  Caesarea,  John  of 
Damascus,  Jerome — in  short,  it  is  the  common  doctrine 
of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  and  their  followers,  that 
belief  in  the  existence  of  God  is  in  man  innate  ;  and, 
among  them,  Athanasius,  in  so  many  words,  directly  declares 
that  for  the  idea  of  God  "we  have  no  need  of  anything 
but  ourselves."  So  far,  then,  I  think  we  may  admit  that 
we  have  sufficient  illustration  of  the  argument  for  the 
existence  of  God — it  can  hardly  be  called  'proof- — that 
•  l< ■  ] >-  n<ls  on  the  common  agreement  of  mankind,  nationally 
and  individually,  and  is  frequently  expressed  by  the  Latin 
brocard:  Quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ah  omnibus. 
It  is  hardly  a  proof,  as  I  say;  but,  as  an  argument,  it  has 
its  own  weight ;  and,  as  Eeid  says,  "  A  consent  of  ages  and 
nations,  of  the  learned  and  the  vulgar,  ouuht,  at  least,  to 
have  great  authority,  unless  we  can  show  some  prejudice 
as  universal  as  that  consent  is,  which  might  be  the  cause 
of  it."  And  here,  of  course,  the  tendency  to  a  belief  in  the 
supernatural  on  the  part  of  mankind  may  be  adduced  as 
precisely  such  a  prejudice ;  but  the  question  remains,  is 
not  such  tendency  precisely  the  innate  idea — only,  perhaps, 
not  always  in  the  highest  of  its  forms  ?  That,  as  an 
argument,  it  should  have  possessed  the  full  acceptance  of 
the  Fathers,  is  only  natural;  for  there  in  their  reading 
it  was  ever  before  them :  the  intense  Godwards  of  the 
Bible  as  on  every  page  of  it.  For  that,  indeed,  is  it 
estimable:  that,  to  all  mankind,  is  its  fascination  and  its 
irresistible  and  overpowering  charm.  I'm,  be  it  as  it 
may  with  the  argument  from  the  consensus  omnium  as 
being  the  vox  naturae,  if  it  was  from  the  Bible  that  the 
Fathers  were  led  to  it,  there  was  about  equal  reason  for 


182  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

their  being  led,  by  the  same  authority,  to  the  other 
arguments  ;  as  that  from  design  especially.  Why,  to  that, 
innumerable  passages  of  the  grandest  inspiration  were 
perpetually  before  their  eyes  or  ringing  in  their  ears.  It 
were  out  of  place  to  quote  such  passages  at  any  length 
here ;  but  I  may  remind  you  of  such  exclamations  in  the 
Psalms,  as :  "  How  manifold  are  Thy  works  !  in  wisdom 
hast  Thou  made  them  all :  the  earth  is  full  of  Thy  riches  : 
who  coverest  Thyself  with  light  as  with  a  garment ;  who 
stretchest  out  the  heavens  like  a  curtain ;  who  maketh 
the  clouds  Thy  chariot;  who  walketh  upon  the  wings  of 
the  wind."  "Whereupon  are  the  foundations  of  the  earth 
fastened  ?  or  who  laid  the  corner-stone  thereof,  when  the 
morning  stars  sang  together,  and  all  the  sons  of  God 
shouted  for  joy  ?  "  With  such  expressions  as  these  before 
their  eyes,  as  I  say,  or  ringing  in  their  ears,  it  was  im- 
possible but  that  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  should  think 
of  the  wonders  of  the  creation.  Ferdinand  Christian 
Baur  points  out,  as  though,  indeed,  they  (these  proofs) 
were  but  beginning  then,  that  in  many  the  usual  expres- 
sions of  the  Fathers,  elements  may  be  seen  to  show 
themselves  towards  the  development  of  both  arguments, 
the  cosmological  as  well  as  the  teleological.  And  he 
directly  quotes,  in  evidence,  passages  from  Tertullian, 
Irenaeus,  Theophilus,  Minucius  Felix,  Athenagoras,  Lac- 
tantius,  and  others.  But  there  are  a  great  many  other 
ecclesiastical  writers  than  those  mentioned  by  Baur,  who 
give  their  testimony  to  the  arguments  for  the  existence  of 
God.  One  might  quote  at  great  length  in  this  reference, 
but  time  fails,  and  I  must  pass  on. 

Though  it  is  perhaps  possible  to  find  matter  of  sugges- 
tion elsewhere,  especially  in  Augustine,  I  proceed  then,  at 
once  to  Anselm  of  Canterbury  as  alone  responsible  for  the 
proof  that  bears  his  name.  This,  the  ontological  proof,  as 
it  appears  in  Anselm's   own  Latin,  I   translate   thus : — 


THE  COLLEGE  ESSAY  OF  1838.  183 

"  That  there  is  in  the  understanding  something  good,  than 
which  a  greater  cannot  be  thought — this,  when  heard,  is 
understood;  and  whatever  is  understood  is  in  the  under- 
standing. But  assuredly  that  than  which  a  greater  cannot 
be  thought,  cannot  be  in  the  understanding  alone:  for  if 
that  than  which  no  greater  can  be  thought  were  in  the 
understanding  alone,  then  plainly  than  that  (than  which  a 
greater  cannot  be  thought),  a  greater  can  be  thought — that, 
namely,  which  is  such  also  in  reality.  Beyond  doubt  there 
exists,  then,  something,  than  which  a  greater  cannot  be 
thought,  both  in  the  understanding  and  in  reality." 

I  hold  in  my  hand  a  little  essay  of  my  own,  entitled, 
"  An  estimate  of  the  value  of  the  argument  a  priori,"  a 
little  optional  essay  it  was,  written  for,  and  read  in,  the 
Moral  Philosophy  Class,  Glasgow  University,  in  the  winter 
of  1838.  Dr.  Fleming,  the  Ethical  Professor  at  that  time, 
was  not  a  man  of  large  culture,  either  ancient  or  modern  ; 
and  with  the  literature  of  this  present  century,  chiefly 
poetry  and  romance  as  at  first  it  was,  he  was  on  the  whole, 
perhaps,  not  specially  sympathetic.  His  literature  rather, 
as  I  think  we  may  say,  was  Pope  and  Goldsmith,  Hume 
and  Kobertson ;  Samuel  Johnson  and  Dr.  Hugh  Blair ; 
and  his  philosophy,  in  the  main,  that  of  Reid,  Stewart,  and 
Brown,  at  the  same  time  that  his  favourite  writer  of  all, 
perhaps,  philosophical  or  other,  was  David  Hume.  Dr. 
Fleming  was  a  very  acceptable  professor,  a  man  of  elo- 
quence, judgment,  and  taste,  and  taught  well ;  but,  some- 
how, one  did  not  expect  to  hear  of  Anselm  at  his  hands. 
His  Student's  Manual  of  Moral  Philosophy  shows,  however, 
that  the  notice  of  Anselm  was  no  peculiarity  of  the  one 
session,  but  belonged,  in  all  probability,  more  or  less,  to 
all.  In  that  particular  session,  the  form  in  which  it  was 
given  to  us  appears  to  have  been  this:  "Our  notion  of 
God  is  that  of  a  Being  than  whom  nothing  can  be  greater; 
but  if  His  existence  be  only  in  our  intellect,  there  is  room 


184  GIFFOKD  LECTUKE  THE  TENTH. 

for  the  existence  of  a  Being  greater  (by  the  addition  of 
reality)  than  the  One  of  whom  we  have  the  notion  that  He 
is  infinitely  great ;  which  is  absurd.  God  has  therefore 
a  real  existence."  That,  indeed,  comes  pretty  well  to  the 
same  meaning  as  what  I  have  translated.  The  essayist 
remarks  of  it:  "With  respect  to  Anselm's  argument,  it  is 
indisputably  a  mere  sophism,  a  cunningly-entangled  net, 
but  still  one  which  it  is  possible  to  break  through."  And 
then  he  continues  :  "  But,  though  its  nature  be  such,  it  may 
not  be  altogether  useless  to  be  able  to  expose  its  fallacy. 
Let  us  try,  for  example,  if  we  cannot  concoct  an  argument 
in  appearance  just  as  conclusive  as  Anselm's,  and  yet 
evidently  absurd.  When  Milton  attempted  to  describe 
the  Garden  of  Eden,  he  attempted  to  portray  the  most  per- 
fect paradise  his  mind  could  conceive.  Milton's  notion,  then, 
of  Eden,  is  that  of  a  garden  than  which  nothing  can  be  more 
perfect ;  but  if  the  existence  of  Eden  be  only  in  Milton's 
intellect,  there  is  room  for  the  existence  of  a  garden  more 
perfect  than  that  of  which  Milton  has  the  conception  ; 
which  is  absurd.  Milton's  Eden  has  therefore  a  real 
existence.  Again,  when  Thomson  conceived  his  Castle  of 
Indolence,  his  conception  was  that  of  a  scene  than  which 
nothing  could  be  more  lazy,  languid,  and  indolent ;  but  if 
the  existence  of  this  scene  be  confined  to  his  intellect, 
there  would  be  room  for  a  scene  still  more  lazy,  languid, 
and  indolent  (as  it  might  have  a  real  existence)  than  that 
of  which  he  has  the  notion;  which  is  absurd.  Therefore 
there  is  a  Castle  of  Indolence."  "  The  fallacy  lies  in  the 
forming  the  conception  of  something  superlative,  and  yet 
leaving  out  one  of  the  notions  necessary  to  render  it 
superlative."  I  cpiote  this  for  the  purpose  of  showing 
that  if  I  now  view  Anselm's  argument  somewhat  otherwise 
than  I  did  then,  it  cannot  be  for  any  want  of  the  usual 
and  reputed  common-sense  and  correct  understanding  in 
its  regard      There  is  no  book  now,  which  tells  us  any- 


GAUNILO.  185 

thing  of  Anselm,  but  tells  us  as  well  of  Gaunilo  or 
Gaunilon.  "  Gaunilon,"  says  Mr.  Lewes,  "  pointed  out  the 
fundamental  error  of  Anselm  in  concluding  that  whatever 
was  true  of  ideas,  must  be  true  of  realities."  This,  indeed, 
Mas  so  clearly  the  whole  state  of  the  case  to  Mr.  Lewes, 
that  that  remark  appears  enough  to  him,  and  he  does  not 
condescend  to  repeat  Anselm's  argument  at  all.  Prantl, 
too,  seems  very  much  of  the  same  mind  as  Mr.  Lewes.  In 
a  note  he  does,  indeed,  give  the  argument ;  but  he  adds, 
"  and  so  on  in  a  current,  crude  confusion  of  thought  and 
being ; "  while  in  the  text,  he  writes  of  it  thus :  "  It 
exhibits  to  us  only  the  spectacle  of  the  grossest  self- 
contradiction,  made  possible  by  the  attempt  to  prove  pre- 
cisely subjectively,  the  most  perfect  objectivity.  But  the 
absurdity  of  the  enterprise  was  quite  clearly  seen  into  by 
Gaunilo,  who  alleged  that  the  proof  was  equally  applicable 
to  the  existence  of  an  absolutely  perfect  island."  Gaunilo 
was  a  certain  Count  de  Montigni,  who  had  retired,  late  in 
life,  and  disgusted  by  feudal  failures,  into  the  convent  of 
Marmoutier,  near  Tours.  Every  reader  of  philosophy 
knows  about  Gaunilo  and  his  island  now.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  the  essayist  who  opposed  Milton's  Eden, 
and  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence,  to  the  argumentation 
of  Anselm,  had  still  many  years  to  wait  before  he 
should  know  that  there  had  been  any  such  man  as 
Gaunilo.  Indeed,  I  am  very  much  inclined  to  believe 
that  Gaunilo  was  at  that  time  a  perfectly  unknown  name 
almost  to  everybody,  perhaps  to  the  professor  himself. 

Ueberweg  seems  to  be  of  the  same  opinion  in  regard  to 
the  entire  argument  of  Anselm.  "  The  notion  of  God,"  he 
says,  "  which,  in  the  Monologium,  Anselm  arrives  at 
cosmologically  by  a  logical  ascent  from  the  particular  to 
the  universal,  he  endeavours  to  make  objectively  valid  in 
the  Proslogium  ontologically  by  mere  development  of  the 
notion,  thereby  demonstrating  the  existence  of  God  from 


186  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

the  simple  idea  of  God  ;  for  he  was  dissatisfied  that,  as  in 
the  method  of  the  Monologium,  the  proof  of  the  existence 
of  the  absolute  should  appear  dependent  on  the  existence 
of  the  relative."  As  is  easy  to  understand,  Ueberweg  has 
little  favour  for  the  idea  of  actually  extricating  real  exist- 
ence out  of  ideal  existence,  things  there  without  out  of 
mere  thoughts  here  within:  he  sees  very  clearly  the 
absurdity  of  sacrificing  one  alleged  maximum  to  another 
alleged  maximum  because,  after  all,  the  allegation  is  false, 
and  what  is  alleged  in  the  one  case  is  not  a  maximum. 
His  words  are  :  "  The  absurdity  of  comparing  together  two 
entities,  one  of  which  shall,  not  exist,  but  only  be  thought, 
while  the  other  shall  both  be  thought  and  exist,  and  so 
inferring  that  this  latter,  as  greatest,  must  not  only  exist 
in  thought,  but  also  in  reality  ! "  Generally,  is  Ueberweg's 
perfectly  cogent  remark  here :  "  Every  inference  from 
definition  is  only  hypothetically  true,  with  presupposition, 
that  is,  of  the  actual  existence  of  the  subject." 

There  cannot  be  a  doubt,  then,  of  the  correctness  of 
all  these  views  in  their  hostility  to  the  argument  of 
Anselm.  It  is  hard  to  believe,  however,  that  any  mere 
absurdity,  and  for  nothing  but  the  curiosity  of  it,  should 
have  been  distinguished  beyond  all  others  such  by  the 
unexampled  honour  of  such  enormous  reference.  Accord- 
ingly, as  Erdmann  puts  it,  there  is  already  a  turn  given  to 
it  towards  a  more  respectable  significance.  Alluding  to 
the  Monologium  as  preliminary  to  the  Proslogium,  and 
to  the  cosmological  result  of  the  former  as  preliminary 
to  the  ontological  operation  of  the  latter,  Erdmann  writes 
thus :  "  The  resultant  notion  of  God  is  now  applied  by 
Anselm  in  behoof  of  the  ontological  proof  for  the  exist- 
ence of  God,  which  he  has  developed  in  his  Proslogium, 
the  further  title  of  which  is  Fides  quaercns  intellectum, 
faith  in  search  of  an  understanding  for  itself.  Referring 
to  the  first  words  of  the  14th  Psalm,  he  would  prove  to 


ERDMANN HEGEL.  187 

the  fool  who  says  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God,  that  he 
contradicts  himself.  He  assumes  for  this  only  the  single 
presupposition  that  the  denier  of  ( rod  knows  what  he  says, 
and  does  not  give  vent  to  mere  meaningless  terms.  Assum- 
ing him  to  understand  by  God  that  than  which  nothing 
can  be  thought  greater,  and  assuming  him  also  to  admit 
that  to  be  both  in  the  intellect  and  in  fact,  is  greater 
than  to  be  in  the  intellect  only,  then  he  must  likewise 
admit  that  God  cannot  be  thought  not  to  BE,  and  that  he 
has  therefore  only  thoughtlessly  babbled.  And  just  so 
also  is  Anselm  perfectly  in  the  right  when  he  replied  to 
the  objection  of  Gaunilo,  in  his  illustration  of  the  island, 
namely,  that  what  he  (Anselm)  started  from  was  not 
something  that  is  greater  than  all,  but  something  than 
which  nothing  can  be  thought  greater,  and  that  he  had 
thereby  brought  the  fool  into  the  necessity  of  admitting 
either  that  he  thinks  God  as  actually  existent,  or  that 
what  he  says  he  does  not  think."  If  this  account  of  the 
matter  be  followed  out,  I  doubt  not  most  people  will  feel 
inclined  to  allow  Anselm  a  greater  amount  of  sense  than 
in  this  particular  instance  he  has  hitherto  got  the  credit 
of.  His  reply,  in  fact,  in  that  sense,  is  utterly  irresistible. 
You  say  there  is  no  God ;  but  if  you  think  what  you 
say,  then  God  is.  If  you  think  God  necessarily  as  that 
than  which  nothing  can  be  greater,  then  God  is  :  God  is,  a 
God  thought  not  to  be  were  no  God  :  give  such  an  import 
to  it,  then  the  notion  of  God  were  no  notion  of  God.  It 
is  very  probable  that  Erdmann  has  touched  the  very 
kernel  of  the  nut  here.  Kant  does  not  come  into  con- 
sideration at  present,  as  his  place  is  among  the  opponents 
of  the  proofs,  and  characterization  in  his  case  is  still 
distant.  As  for  Hegel,  Anselm's  argument  comes  to  be 
mentioned  by  him  a  great  many  times,  and  always  with 
the  greatest  respect.  He  actually  says  at  page  547  of 
the    second    volume    of    his    Philosophy   of    Religion : 


188  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

"  This  argument  has  been  found  out  only  first  in  Christen- 
dom, by  Anselm  of  Canterbury,  namely ;  but  since  then 
it  has  been  brought  forward  by  all  other  later  philoso- 
phers, as  Descartes,  Leibnitz,  Wolff,  always,  however,  with 
the  other  proofs,  though  it  alone  is  the  true  one."  This, 
nevertheless,  is  not,  as  one  knows,  the  common  opinion ; 
as,  indeed,  I  find  not  badly  put  in  this  little  old  essay 
of  fifty  years  ago,  the  concluding  words  of  which  are 
these  : — "  Such,  then,  is  our  estimate.  And  we  think 
ourselves  entitled  to  conclude,  that  the  value  of  the  a 
priori  argument  is,  in  comparison  with  that  of  the  a 
posteriori,  insignificant.  It  is  needless  to  make  use  of  a 
weak  evidence,  when  we  can  get  a  stronger.  Why 
should  we  attempt  to  read  by  the  light  of  a  candle,  when 
we  may  open  our  shutters  to  the  sun?"  Evidently, 
therefore,  it  will  require  us  to  look  at  Anselm's  argument 
in  a  very  peculiar  manner  before  we  shall  be  able,  in 
opposition  to  the  current  opinion,  to  endorse  that  of 
Hegel.  Hegel,  in  fact,  will  not  satisfy  many  readers  in 
these  proofs  of  his  for  the  existence  of  God.  They  seem 
so  diffuse,  so  vague,  so  indefinite ;  even  to  abound  so  in 
repetitions,  in  circumlocutions,  in  strange  clauses  out  of 
place,  or  insusceptible  of  any  meaning  in  their  place — 
in  short,  so  confused,  dry,  colourless,  and  uninteresting, 
that  one  wonders  if  it  be  possible  that  there  ever  was 
found  a  class  of  young  men  able  to  listen  to  them.  I  do 
not  suppose  it  can  be  denied,  indeed,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  find  in  all  Hegel  more  slovenly  writing  than  in  these 
Beiveisc  that  constitute  pretty  well  the  latter  half  of  the 
second  volume  of  the  Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion.  Words  seem  thrown  down  again  and  again 
just  at  a  venture :  as  they  came  they  were  taken,  no 
matter  that  they  looked  more  or  less  ineffectual  perhaps. 
We  seem  to  have  before  us,  in  fact,  a  marksman  who 
has  indeed  a  mark  in  his  view,  but  who  fires  at  it  always 


MONOLOGIUM.  189 

carelessly,  and  often  almost  as  though  intentionally  widely. 
Nevertheless,  ever  here  and  there,  grains  are  to  be  found 
by  an  eye  that  shall  look  long  enough  and  deep  enough ; 
and  they  are  not  wanting  in  what  concerns  Anselni. 

But  in  the  method  of  Anselni  an  essential  prelim- 
inary to  the  Proslogium  is  the  Monologium ;  the  reason- 
ing of  which  is,  in  a  certain  modified  way,  cosmological. 
The  fulcrum  of  it  lies  in  what  the  act  of  predication 
is  found  to  involve.  Things  similar  have  a  common 
predicate,  which  common  predicate  obtains  less  or  more 
according  to  the  individual  condition  of  each.  Each,  as 
participant,  then,  in  what  is  common  to  them  all,  pre- 
supposes that  in  which  it  is  participant.  What  is  good 
presupposes  the  Good  ;  what  great,  the  Great ;  what  true, 
the  True ;  what  beautiful,  the  Beautiful,  etc.  But  all 
things  also  are :  they  all  participate  in  Being ;  and  they, 
therefore,  all  presuppose  Being.  Being  as  Being,  highest 
Being,  truest  Being,  best  Being,  supreme  Being,  perfect 
Being,  absolute  Being  is  the  one  universal  presupposition. 
Relatives  only  prove  an  absolute.  All  that  relatively  is,  only 
is  through  that  which  absolutely  is — which  withdrawn,  all 
falls,  all  disappears.  This  is  the  teaching  of  Augustine 
as  well ;  and  Anselni  exclaims,  it  must  be  "  most  certain 
and  clear  to  all  who  are  only  willing  to  see."  Further, 
there  cannot  be  a  plurality  of  absolute  beings ;  for  even 
if  there  were  many,  they  must  all  participate  in  a 
common  absolute  Being,  which  is,  therefore,  one  and 
single,  and  alone  by  itself.  "  This  highest  nature,"  says 
Anselm  is  "per  se  ipsam  et  ex  se  ipsa:  all  other  things 
are  not  through  themselves,  but  through  it,  and  not  from 
themselves,  but  from  it.  .  .  .  Then,  since  it  were  wicked- 
ness to  think  that  the  substance  of  the  most  perfect  nature 
is  something  than  which  something  else  were  in  an}-  way 
better,  that  most  perfect  substance  must  itself  be."  In 
this  way,  evidently,  we  have  a  complete  introduction  to 


190  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

what  is  regarded  as  the  proper  argument  of  Anselm. 
We  have  here,  that  is,  completely  formed,  what  that 
argument  starts  with  as  the  notion  of  God,  the  notion, 
namely,  of  that,  than  which  there  cannot  possibly  be  a 
greater.  In  the  Monologium,  Anselm  puts  the  case  at 
lull  length  ;  but  the  same  strain  is  to  be  found  in 
Boethius  as  well  as  in  Augustine.  Boethius  held, 
namely,  that  negation  as  such  equally  presupposes 
affirmation  as  such ;  and  that,  consequently,  imperfect 
things  being,  there  must  of  necessity  be  a  highest  perfect ; 
and  in  such  wise  that  the  perfection  were  no  mere  predi- 
cate, but  the  very  essence,  substance,  and  nature.  Anselm, 
then,  having  made  good  in  the  Monologium  this  notion 
of  a  most  perfect  being,  as  in  Augustine  and  Boethius, 
proceeds  somewhat  thus  in  the  Proslogium  to  secure  his 
notion  reality.  "  Thinking  of  my  opusculum,  the  Mono- 
logium," he  says,  "  which  I  had  put  forth  as  an  example 
of  meditation  on  the  reason  of  faith,  and  considering  that 
it  was  made  up  of  a  concatenation  of  many  arguments, 
I  began  to  ask  myself  if  it  were  by  chance  possible  to 
invent  a  single  argument,  which  to  prove  itself  should 
stand  in  need  of  no  other,  and  which  alone  should  suffice, 
etc.  etc.,  I  have  written  this  little  book  which  I  have  named 
Proslogium,  that  is,  alloquium  Dei."  He  then  begins  his 
book  by  an  actual  prayer  to  God  in  its  reference,  and  in 
the  same  way,  at  the  conclusion  of  his  argument,  he  gives 
"  thanks  to  Thee,  because  what,  by  Thy  gift,  I  first  believed, 
I  now,  by  Thy  illumination,  so  understand  that  if  I  were 
unwilling  to  believe  I  should  not  be  able  not  to  perceive." 
In  fact,  Anselm,  it  appears,  had  long  anxiety  and  no  rest 
day  or  night  for  the  thought  of  proving,  by  a  simple 
argument,  that  whom  we  believe,  exists,  fearing  for  long 
that  it  was  mere  temptation  of  the  devil  to  propose  to 
establish  by  reason  the  things  of  faith,  but  rejoicing  at 
length  in  his  success  through   the  srace  of  God.     We 


WHAT  THE  ARGUMENT  REALLY  MEANS.  191 

cannot  but  see,  then,  that  this  was  a  most  serious  matter 
to  Anselm,  and  that  he  conceived  himself  in  the  end  to 
have  accomplished  only  what  was  a  true  and  genuine 
work  under  the  approbation  and  through  the  inspiration 
of  the  Deity  Himself.  His  reply  to  Gaunilo,  indeed, 
makes  all  this  only  the  plainer ;  and  it,  too,  must  be 
pronounced  in  its  own  way,  and  in  what  it  aims  at,  not 
only  genuine,  but  successful.  Anselm  needed  no  Gaunilo 
to  tell  him  the  difference  between  ideality  and  reality. 
His  own  words  are  these :  "  It  is  one  thing,  that  there 
is  something  in  the  intellect  and  another  thing  to  per- 
ceive that  it  is.  For  when  a  painter  prefigures  in 
thought  the  image  of  what  he  is  to  do,  he  has  indeed 
that  image  already  in  intellect,  but  he  does  not  yet  per- 
ceive that  it  really  is,  because  he  has  not  yet  made  it ; 
but  when  he  has  painted  it,  then  he  both  has  in  the 
intellect,  and  perceives  as  existent,  what  he  has  done." 
That  Anselm  was  broad  awake,  then,  to  the  usual  dis- 
tinction, must  be  held  as  a  matter  absolutely  beyond 
doubt ;  and  there  can,  consequently,  be  no  means  of 
saving  his  intelligence  in  the  matter  of  his  argument, 
but  by  the  supposition  that  he  assumed  the  distinction 
in  question  to  be  plainly  inapplicable  to  God,  who  was  a 
Being,  not  finite  as  an  island,  or  a  garden,  or  a  castle — 
but  infinite.  God  was  no  object  for  the  senses,  like  the 
picture  of  the  painter :  God  was  the  infinite  substance 
that  is  of  all  that  is.  That,  indeed,  is  the  burden  of  his 
argument.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  certain  that,  as  a 
formal  syllogism,  it  is  faulty  and  inadequate.  The 
major  premiss,  in  fact,  already,  by  presupposition,  con- 
tains within  it  the  whole  case.  Its  subject  is  that  which 
is  reallest,  that  which  is  most  perfect;  but  that  subject 
cannot  be  reallest  or  most  perfect  unless  it  is.  To  com- 
pare, a  part  of  the  notion  with  the  whole  notion  cannot 
possibly  give  the  real  existence  which  the  notion,  by  pre- 


192  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TENTH. 

supposition,  already  has.  At  best,  considered  as  a 
syllogism,  it  has  all  the  cogency  it  can  have  when  put  as 
Erdmann  puts  it,  who  expressly  says,  "  Precisely  by  the 
quite  subjective  turn  which  Anselm  gives  his  proof,  is 
its  value  greater  than  in  the  later  forms  of  Wolff  and 
others."  That  word  "  subjective "  here  is  the  merit  of 
Erdmann.  Anselm  is  supposed  to  speak  to  the  fool  who 
says  in  his  heart,  There  is  no  God,  and  twits  him  with 
self-contradiction.  When  you  say  God,  you  name  that 
than  which  nothing  can  be  thought  greater :  you  under- 
stand as  much ;  but  you  still  say,  it  has  no  existence ; 
but  if  it  has  not  existence,. it  is  not  greatest,  and  you 
have  contradicted  yourself.  That  is  the  truth  of  the 
matter,  then.  To  think  God — truly  to  think  God,  we 
must  think  Him  to  exist.  Existence  is  an  element  in 
the  very  notion  of  God ;  or  with  God  notion  and  exist- 
ence are  inseparable.  Existence  is  involved  in  the  very 
thought  of  God — flows  and  follows  from  His  very  nature 
and  essence.  That  is  the  very  idea  of  God, — viz.  that  He 
is.  We  cannot  think  God,  unless  we  think  Him  to  be.  To 
say  it  is  only  an  idea,  contradicts  the  very  idea  that  it  is, 
for  that  idea  is  that  God  is.  The  idea  of  what  is  most 
perfect,  of  what  is  reallest,  is  the  idea  of  God,  take  that 
idea  as  a  rule,  and  compare  with  it  what  shall  be  thought, 
but  not  be,  why,  plainly,  as  much  as  this  is  not  enough  ; 
it  falls  short  and  fails.  Or,  to  say  the  same  thing 
otherwise,  we  admit  the  notion  of  God,  the  idea  of  God, 
to  be  the  highest  possible  notion,  the  highest  possible 
idea ;  but  if  it  is  the  highest,  then  it  is.  Examine  our- 
selves as  we  may,  that  we  find  to  be  our  own  actual 
subjective  condition :  our  own  actual  subjective  condition 
is  precisely  that  notion,  precisely  that  conviction.  The 
syllogism  of  Anselm,  then,  is  but  an  explication,  an 
analysis  of  our  own  state  of  mind :  it  is  there  simply  to 
brim?  home  to  us  what  our  own  thought  amounts  to. 


KNOWLEDGE  AND  BELIEF.  193 

In  a  word,  God  is  not  something  that  can  be  thought,  and 
yet  thought  not  to  be.  That  is  a  contradiction — that  is 
a  contradiction  of  thought  itself ;  and  that  really  is  the 
thought  of  Anselm.  That  is  the  sublimest  thought  of 
Descartes  also,  and  that  is  the  very  first  word  of  modern 
philosophy — this,  namely:  God  is  that  whose  nature 
cannot  be  conceived  unless  as  existent :  the  very  notion 
of  God  includes  and  implies  the  being  of  God :  Deus 
causa  sui  est — God  is  His  own  cause.  It  has  been 
objected  in  blame  to  Anselm  that,  as  regards  the  two 
polar  elements,  Knowledge  and  Belief,  he  has  given  the 
precedency  to  the  latter,  to  belief ;  but  we  may  remind 
ourselves  that,  "  As  the  earth  must  be  loosened  for  the 
reception  of  the  seed,  so  must  the  heart  be  softened  (by 
Belief)  for  reception  of  the  truth  (in  Knowledge)."  And, 
really,  there  is,  after  all,  no  harder  heart  than  that  of 
your  sceptic — no  shallower  soul  than  that  of  him  whose 
enlightenment  is  a  sneer.  That,  as  it  is  the  lesson  of 
Augustine,  so  it  is  the  lesson  of  Anselm,  to  whom  the 
thought  of  God  means  the  being  of  God.  And  with  that 
word  in  our  ears,  we  may  well  conclude  this  part  of  the 


1  "The  fallacy  lies  in  the  forming  the  conception  of  something  super- 
lative, and  yet  leaving  out  one  of  the  notions  necessary  to  render  it 
superlative."  These  words  of  the  little  Essay  (p.  1S4),  may  be  interpreted 
as  unwittingly  telling  precisely  in  the  opposite  sense.  That  is,  it  is  the 
"fallacy,"  we  may  say,  not  of  Anselm,  but  precisely  of  the  fool,  so  to 
leave  out !  To  say  God  and  unsay  existence,  is  to  say  and  unsay  at  once. 
If  God  is  a  necessary  thought,  then  as  sure  as  His  thought  is,  He  is. 
But  God  is  a  necessary  thought,  therefore,  etc. 


X 


THE  SECOND  COUKSE  OF  LECTUEES 
THE  NEGATIVE. 

1890. 


GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

Lectures  by  Lord  Gifford  —  By  whom  edited— Germane  to,  and  illus- 
trative of,  natural  theology — Number  and  nature — Their  literary 
excellence — Even  poetical — Der  laute  Larm  des  Tages — On  atten- 
tion— On  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux— (Luther,  Gibbon)— What 
Lord  Gifford  admires — The  spirit  of  religion — The  Trinity — 
Emerson,  Spinoza— Substance — Brahmanism — Religion — Un- 
derstanding and  reason — Metaphysical  terms — Materialism — 
Literary  enthusiasm — Technical  shortcomings— Emerson  and 
Carlyle —Social  intercourse — Humanity — Liberality  and  toler- 
ance— Faith — Mesmerism — Ebenezer  Elliott — An  open  sense  to 
evidence. 

I  beg  to  express  to  you,  in  the  first  place,  the  pleasure 
which  it  gives  me  to  meet  once  again  an  assembly  like 
the  present,  in  the  interest  of  these  lectures  on  the  Lord 
Gifford  Bequest.  Then,  in  the  reference  that  seems 
naturally  next,  as  regards  an  introductory  discourse, 
namely,  perhaps  I  may  be  allowed  to  say  that  I  might 
excusably  hold  no  such  preliminary  to  be  expected  from 
me  on  this  occasion,  when  what  we  begin  is  but  the  half 
of  a  whole  that  had  abundantly  its  preparatory  explana- 
tions at  first.  So  far  one  may  incline  to  accept  that, 
probably,  as  a  very  reasonable  view.  Still,  I  know  not 
that  I  can  proceed  to  act  on  it  with  any  grace,  in  face  of 
the  fact  of  this  little  book.  As  one  sees,  it  is  a  handsome 
little  volume ;  and  it  came  to  me,  bound  as  it  is,  unex- 
pectedly and  with  surprise,  from  Frankfort-on-the-Main. 
It  has,  somehow,  a  singularly  simple,  pure,  and  taking 
title-page,  the  words  on  which  are  these :  "  Lectures 
Delivered  on  Various  Occasions  by  Adam  Gifford,  one  of 


198  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

the  Senators  of  the  College  of  Justice,  Scotland."  This 
title-page  is  followed  by  a  perfectly  correspondent  modest 
little  note,  to  the  effect,  that  the  lectures  concerned  are 
"  a  selection  from  a  miscellaneous  number  of  others  given 
from  time  to  time  by  request,  on  very  various  occasions, 
and  to  greatly  differing  audiences,  the  preparation  of 
which  was  a  great  pleasure  to  the  lecturer,"  and,  if  "  of 
necessity  sometimes  hurried,  never  careless."  "  They 
were  in  no  case,"  it  is  added,  "  meant  for  publication,  and 
we  print  a  few  of  them  now  only  for  his  friends."  The 
signatures  to  that  note — the  "  we  " — are  Alice  Ealeigh 
and  Herbert  James  Gifford ;  the  one  the  niece,  so  long, 
in  loving  attention,  associated  with  Lord  Gifford,  and  the 
other  his  son.  The  lectures  themselves,  as  we  see,  are 
not  to  be  regarded  as  published ;  and  that  I  should  speak 
of  them  here,  consequently,  may  seem  to  border  on 
impropriety.  But,  as  we  see  also,  they  are  printed  for 
his  friends ;  and  I  know  not  that  I  speak  to  others  than 
the  friends  of  Lord  Gifford  when  I  speak  to  this  audience. 
I  am  very  certain  of  this,  too,  that  I  can  adduce  nothing 
from  these  lectures  that  will  not  prove  admirably  illus- 
trative and  confirmatory  of  the  express  terms  in  which, 
in  the  Trust-Disposition  and  Settlement,  directions  are 
given  with  respect  to  the  duties  necessarily  incumbent  on 
the  holders  of  this  chair.  It  is  in  that  light  and  for 
that  light,  that,  precisely  to  me  at  all  events,  these  lectures 
of  Lord  Gifford's  own  are  very  specially  welcome.  And 
if  now,  by  quotation,  comment,  or  remark,  I  proceed  to 
make  as  much  as  that  good  to  you  also,  I  have  the  hope 
that  the  result  will  prove  constitutive,  as  well,  of  a  lecture 
in  place,  a  lecture  in  just  such  a  course  as  this  is,  a 
lecture  on  the  subject  of  Natural  Theology,  and  a  lecture, 
too,  even  in  a  way,  almost  at  the  very  hands  of  the 
founder  himself  of  this  chair  itself.  There  are  seven  of 
these  lectures  of  Lord  Gifford's,  and  they  are  respectively 


LITERARY  EXCELLENCE. 


199 


named  as  they  come:  1.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson;  2. 
Attention  as  an  Instrument  of  Self-Culture;  3.  Saint 
Bernard  of  Clairvaux ;  4.  Substance:  A  Metaphysical 
Thought;  5.  Law  a  Schoolmaster,  or  the  Educational 
Function  of  Jurisprudence;  6.  The  Ten  Avatars  of 
Vishnu;  and  7.  The  Two  Fountains  of  Jurisprudence. 
Only  two  of  them,  then,  so  far  as  the  titles  would  seem 
to  suggest,  belong  to  the  writer's  own  profession  of  law, 
while  the  rest  are  literary,  philosophical,  or  even  meta- 
physical. Three  of  them  in  spirit,  and  even  more  or  less 
in  matter,  might  not  unreasonably  be  held  to  have  a 
direct  bearing  on  the  very  subject  which  it  has  been  his 
will  that  the  four  universities  of  Scotland  should  be 
bound  in  perpetuity  expressly  to  discuss. 

What  strikes  one  at  first  in  these  lectures,  and  from 
the  very  face  of  them,  is  the  constant  vivid  writing,  the 
literary  accomplishment  that  everywhere  obtains  in  them. 
He  says  once,  for  example,  "  If  first  principles  have  not 
been  carried  out,  if  on  the  firm  foundations  the  walls 
have  not  risen  rightly,  by  truest  plummet  perpendicular 
towards  heaven,  and  by  bedded  block  parallel  to  the 
horizon ;  then  be  sure  that  sooner  or  later  we  must  begin 
again,  for  Nature  will  find  out  our  failure,  and  with  her 
there  is  no  forgiveness."  Surely  that  last  is  what  is  usually 
described  as  a  fine  thought ;  and  there  is  concrete  re- 
flection throughout,  as  well  as  felicitous  phrase.  It  is  in 
the  same  way  that  he  says  once :  "  The  prophet  can  tell 
his  vision,  but  he  cannot  give  his  own  anointed  eye." 
What  we  may  almost  call  technical  literary  balance  is 
perpetual  with  him,  as  when  he  says :  "  Hinduism  offers 
culture  to  the  educated  and  wisdom  to  the  wise,  while 
with  equal  hand  she  gives  superstitions  and  charms  to 
the  ignorant  and  to  the  foolish ; "  or  when  he  holds  of 
Emerson  that  "  Many  of  his  essays  are  refined  and 
elevated  poems,  and  some  of  his  poems  are  really  very 


200  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

abstruse  and  difficult  essays."     Genius  "takes  its  own 
way,"  he  tells  us  once;  "it  comes  in  its  own  air-borne 
chariot ;  it  is  bound  by  no  forms,  tied  and  swaddled  in 
no  etiquette  of  costume.      In  the  rudest  garb  it  enters 
the  dress  circle  or  the  robed  conclave,  and  white  neck- 
cloths  and   square  caps   reverently  make  room  for   it." 
Similar  examples  of  expression  are  these :  "  He  (Emerson) 
is  not  covered  over  and  covered  up,  swathed  and  swaddled 
in  his  learning,  like  some  learned  mummies,  but  he  wears 
it  like  a  dress.     He  possesses  it,  and  not  it  him.     He 
bears  it  with  him  like  an  atmosphere  and  an  aroma,  not 
like  a  burden  upon  his  back.     It  is  used  naturally  and 
spontaneously.     It  flows  like  a  fountain  or  exhales  like 
a  perfume ;  never  forced,  never  artificial,  never  added  for 
show  or  effect. — Let  no  one  despise  learning,  true  learning, 
the  lessons  of  experience  or  the  words  of  ancient  wisdom, 
but  remember  that  the  greenness  of  earth's  latest  beauty 
rests  on  the  rocks  and  the  ashes  which  it  took  millenniums 
to  form."     Lord  Gifford  displays  always  a  like  literary 
talent  when  the  occasion  calls  on  him  to  be  descriptive, 
and  often  then  there  are  tones  and  accents  of  even  a  very 
veritable  poesy,  as  when  he  says  once :  "  If  you  will  go 
up  with  me  step  by  step,  I  think  we  may  hope  to  reach 
the  mount  of  Transfiguration  and  almost  to  see  the  glory  ! 
If  you  will  only  give  me  your  strength  and  strive  up- 
wards with  me,  I  think  I  can  almost  promise  you  that, 
even  within  our  hour,  we  shall  enter  the  white  cloud  that 
rests  upon  the  summit,  and  feel  the  dazzling  of  the  light 
that  is  ineffable  ! "     Of  the  Middle  Ages  he  says  :    "  It 
was  a  fierce  world.     No  wonder  gentle  natures  were  glad 
to  quit  it ;  and  when  we  think  of  it  and  realize  it,  we 
cease  to  be  surprised  that  dukes  and  princes,  peasants 
and  paupers,  are  ready  to   leave   their  luxury  or  their 
misery  and  to  seek  a  haven  of  shelter,  where  during  this 
short  life  they  may  say  their  prayers,  and  then  lie  down 


DER  LAUTE  LARM  DES  TAGES.  201 

in  peace  to  sleep,  in  death."  "  The  Middle  Ages  ! "  he 
cries,  "  what  strange  scenes  and  pictures  do  not  the 
words  recall !  The  fortalice  of  the  half-savage  baron  and 
the  mean  huts  of  his  degraded  serfs.  The  proud  pomp 
and  spiritual  power  of  the  haughty  churchman,  before 
which  the  strength  of  kings  and  the  might  of  feudalism 
were  fain  to  kneel.  The  chivalry  of  Europe  drained  time 
after  time  to  furnish  forth  the  armies  of  the  Crusaders. 
Religious  excitements  and  revivals  passing  like  prairie-fires 
over  Europe,  and  compared  with  which  modern  revivals,  even 
the  wildest,  seem  but  the  coldest  marsh  gleams.  Strange 
and  terrible  diseases  and  epidemics,  and  plagues  both 
bodily  and  mental,  that  mowed  down  millions  as  with  the 
scythe  of  destruction.  The  spotted  plague,  and  the  black 
death,  and  the  sweating  sickness.  The  dancing  mania,  the 
barking  mania.  The  were-wolf  and  the  ghoul.  Strange 
mystical  schools  of  philosophy  exciting  popular  admira- 
tion and  enthusiasm  to  us  unexampled  and  inexplicable. 
And  below  all,  the  swelling  and  the  heaving  of  the  slow 
but  advancing  tide,  which  even  yet  is  bearing  us  upon 
its  crest."  In  all  that,  there  is  no  want  of  effective 
description  everywhere ;  but,  surely,  the  last  sentence  is, 
in  a  way,  sublime !  What  is  loudest  in  the  day,  what  is 
most  visible,  what  attracts  the  attention  and  excites  the 
voices  of  the  crowd,  is  not  always  to  us  admirable,  is  not 
always  to  us  cheering,  is  not  always  to  us  hopeful ; 
oftentimes  it  is  disappointing,  dispiriting,  disheartening ; 
sometimes  it  seems  degrading,  or  is  even  at  times  sicken- 
ing. And  then  it  is  that  we  are  glad  to  think  in  the 
strain  of  that  last  sentence  of  Lord  Gifford's.  That,  that 
— on  the  top — before  our  eyes — is  degrading,  beastly, 
disgusting ;  but  "  below  all  "  there  is  "  the  swelling  and 
the  heaving  of  the  slow  but  advancing  tide  "  that,  "  bear- 
ing us  too  on  its  crest,"  flows  on  ever,  heedless  of  the  tern- 
poralities  of  earth,  on  and  on  to  the  perpetuities  of  heaven. 


202  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

Of  the  seven  lectures  in  the  little  book,  there  are 
specially  three  which  are  more  particularly  in  our  way : 
they  are  Ealph  Waldo  Emerson ;  Substance :  a  meta- 
physical thought ;  and  the  Ten  Avatars  of  Vishnu.  Of 
the  two  others  which  are  more  or  less  assonant  to  the 
interests  that  engage  us,  the  lecture  on  Attention  as  an 
Instrument  of  Self-culture  may  be  recommended  as,  in 
the  midst  of  its  excellent  general  advice,  containing 
many  useful  hints  for  practical  service ;  while  that  on 
Saint  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  taking  moral  and  religious 
occasion  from  the  peculiarities  of  the  theme,  is  an  inter- 
esting narrative.  We  may  regard  it  as,  to  some  extent, 
a  proof  of  Lord  Giffbrd's  glowing  sympathy  with  what- 
ever was  heroically  moral  and  religious,  that  he  should 
have  given  himself  so  much  trouble  with,  and  bestowed  so 
much  care  on,  the  career  of  the  young  man  of  twenty-two 
who,  as  he  says,  "  renounced  his  inheritance  and  fortune, 
renounced  his  nobility  of  birth  and  every  title  of  dis- 
tinction, and  stood  penniless  and  barefoot,  a  candidate  for 
admission  at  the  gate  of  the  monastery  of  Citeaux."  He 
certainly  became  a  great  power  in  Christendom,  this 
young  man,  perhaps  the  greatest  of  his  time  ;  but  it  was 
neither  for  worldly  honours  nor  for  bodily  comforts. 
Every  preferment  was  at  once  rejected  by  him — him 
whom  Luther  "  holds  alone  to  be  much  higher  than  all 
the  monks  and  popes  on  the  entire  surface  of  the  earth  ;  " 
while  Gibbon  says  of  him,  he  "  was  content  till  the  hour 
of  his  death  with  the  humble  station  of  abbot  of  his 
own  community."  The  life  in  that  community,  again, 
Lord  Gifford  depicts  to  us  thus  :  "  They  (the  monks) 
were  aroused  every  morning  at  two  o'clock  by  the  convent 
bell,  and  they  immediately  hastened  along  the  dark,  cold 
passages  and  cloisters  to  the  church,  which  was  lighted 
by  a  single  lamp.  After  private  prayer  they  engaged  in 
the  first  service  of  the  day,  '  matins,'  which  lasted  two 


ST.  BERNARD.  203 

hours.  The  next  service  was  '  Lands'  which  was  always 
at  daybreak.  Lauds  was  followed  almost  without  inter- 
mission by  other  religious  exercises  till  about  nine,  when 
the  monks  went,  without  any  breakfast  other  than  a  cup 
of  water,  to  labour  in  the  fields  or  in  the  necessary  work 
of  the  house,  and  this  continued  till  two  o'clock.  At  two 
o'clock  the  famished  monk  was  allowed  to  dine,  as  it  was 
grimly  called  :  and  this  was  the  only  meal  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours.  The  dinner  consisted  almost  always  of  a 
pottage  made  of  peas,  lentils,  or  barley,  sometimes  with 
the  addition  of  a  little  milk,  but  oftener  not.  No 
Cistercian  monk  under  Bernard's  rule  ever  tasted  meat, 
fish,  butter,  grease,  or  eggs.  On  this  one  meal  the  monk 
had  to  subsist  till  the  same  hour  came  round  another 
day — retiring  to  his  hard  pallet  about  nine  o'clock  to  be 
roused  to  the  same  daily  round  at  two  o'clock  next 
morning."  This  day's  "  darg "  was  worse  than  a  Scotch 
ploughman's  yet ;  and  we  are  not  surprised  to  hear  that 
Bernard  was  as  thin  as  a  skeleton,  and  that  "  physicians 
wondered  he  could  live  at  all."  Still  we  have  to  see  all 
this  has  a  charm  for  Lord  Gifford.  "  All  through  these 
frightful  austerities,"  he  says,  "  it  is  not  possible  to  with- 
hold our  tribute  of  admiration ;  here  at  least  is  a  man 
who  believes  in  the  unseen,  and  acts  out  his  belief  un- 
flinchingly." That,  then,  is  what  Lord  Gifford  admires — 
belief  in  the  unseen,  and  the  sacrifice  of  a  life  to  it. 
But  all  through  these  essays,  the  mood,  in  the  main,  is 
not  a  different  one.  Lord  Gifford,  however  it  be  with 
the  letter  of  his  creed,  is  always  spiritually  religious. 
Religious  feeling  is  his  blood ;  and  his  sympathy  is  with 
the  Christian.  "Uneventful  lives  are  often  the  most 
influential,"  he  says;  "it  is  thought,  not  action,  that 
ultimately  moves  the  universe. — The  ink  in  the  inkstand 
of  a  quiet  thinker  of  Kirk  Caldy  (Adam  Smith)  now 
floats  the  commercial  navy  of  the  world ;  and  (to  take 


204  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

with  reverence  the  highest  of  all  instances)  a  few  spoken 
and  unwritten  words  of  a  young  carpenter  of  Nazareth, — 
words  dropped  by  the  waysides  and  in  the  fields  of 
Galilee, — have  regenerated  mankind  and  given  His  name, 
•  Christianity,'  to  half  the  globe."  And  not  here  only, 
but  elsewhere  also,  he  would  seem  to  testify  almost  even 
to  the  life  of  the  very  letter  that  is  spoken  by  the 
Church.  Of  incarnations,  he  says :  "  Ever  and  again 
man's  spirit  tells  him — '  The  gods  are  come  down  to  us 
in  the  likeness  of  men/  in  the  crowd  or  in  the  solitude, 
by  night  or  by  day,  ever  still  the  heavens  are  opened, 
the  dazzling  smites  us  to  the  ground,  and  deep  calleth 
unto  deep."  "  God's  revelations  are  not  over,  are  not 
completed.  We  have  not  yet  heard  His  last  word,  we 
shall  never  do  so.  We  look  for  His  coming  still." 
"  May  we  not  all  unite  in  the  wish,  which  is  the  prayer, 
Thy  kingdom  come  !  "  "I  find  the  great  central  doctrine 
of  Christianity,  that  on  which  all  its  other  doctrines 
turn  and  revolve  as  on  a  pivot,  to  be  an  impressive,  most 
mighty,  and  most  magnificent  Avatar — God  manifest  in 
the  flesh  !  "  It  is  in  reference  to  Hindu  ideas  that  Lord 
Gifford  is  speaking  when  he  is  moved  to  say,  "  God  is 
manifested  in  the  Trinity  !  Three  essences  in  one  God  ! 
Three  aspects  of  the  Infinite."  And  I  may  stop  here 
to  remark  how  deeply  philosophical  Lord  Gifford  would 
seem  to  be  in  his  sense  of  a  doctrine  that  has  proved  a 
stumbling  -  block  and  a  stone  of  offence,  perhaps  to 
hundreds  and  to  thousands  within  the  bounds  of 
Christendom.  If  what  we  can  number  one,  two,  three, 
mean,  and  must  mean,  three  individual  things,  essentially 
separate  and  disjunct,  then  unity  in  trinity  is  an  ex- 
pression that  can  have,  not  possibly,  any  concrete  inter- 
pretation. I  have  a  vague  recollection  of  having  read 
somewhere  of  Carlyle  that  he  once  somewhat  disparagingly 
illustrated  the  Trinity  by  a  man,  in  a  gig,  drawn  by  a 


THE  TRINITY.  205 

horse.     The  gig  was  a  unit,  the  horse  was  a  unit,  and  the 
man  was  a  unit :  how  could  these  three  units  be  different, 
yet  the  same  ;  three,  yet  one  !     If  this  is  true  of  Carlyle, 
I  should  be  very  much   inclined  to    hold  that,  in  this 
instance    at    all    events,    Lord    Gifford   was   the   deeper 
philosopher.     Three  aspects  of  one  Infinity,  says   Lord 
Gifford ;  while    Carlyle   refers   to   three    units   that    are 
palpably  quite  as  many  finites.     Carlyle,  had  he  wished 
to  illustrate  an  essential  trinity,  need  not  have  wandered 
out  of  his  own  self.     That  body  of  his,  as  he  walked 
about,  was  Carlyle ;  and  that  thinking  in  his  head,  as  he 
wrote   his  book,  was  Carlyle ;  and  that  ego — that  I  or 
Me — that  was  one  and  the  same  identical  ego  all  through 
his  body  and  all  through  his  thinking,  was  Carlyle  ;  and 
body,  thinking,  and  ego  were  three,  at  the  same  time  that 
body,  thinking,  and  ego  were  one :  the  three  were  one  ! 
Had  Carlyle  remained  within  himself,  and  eschewed  the 
sis,  he  might  have  found  an  illustration  for  the  Trinity 
that  was,  to  some  extent,  essential,  and  not  numerical  only. 
There  cannot  be  any  doubt   that  Lord  Gifford,  for  his 
part,  at  all  events,  was  perfectly  open  to  the  distinction, 
and  quite  beyond  the  hazard  of  confounding  concretion 
with  abstraction.      Philosophically  he  knew  that  there 
might   be  three  aspects   of  the  one    Infinite ;  and,  as  a 
student  of  the  Middle  Ages,  he  was  perfectly  aware  of  the 
historical    position    of    the    idea    ecclesiastically.       Lord 
Gifford  terms  it  "  a  doctrine  of  our  own  Church,  I  mean 
of  Christianity,  known  as  the  Eternal  Procession  of  the 
Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost  from  the  Father,  a  doctrine 
which  in  scholastic  times  engaged   the   learning  of  the 
Church,  and  helped  to  clothe  the  walls  of  its  spacious 
libraries."       And  perhaps  some  of  us,  indeed,  may  not 
have  yet  forgotten  a  precisely  similar   mention,  in  our 
course  last  year,  with  regard  to  the  early  Church,  modern 
German  philosophy,  and  the  relation  of  the  Son  to  the 


206  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

world.     Another  casual  allusion  of  last  year's  may  also 
be  within   our  recollection,  which   was  to  an   apparent 
assonance    to   pantheism   in  certain   expressions   of   the 
Bequest.     In  the  religious  reference,  it  is  in  place  to  say 
now   that  some   such   assonances  reappear   here  in   the 
little  book  that  at  present  claims  us.     I  daresay  we  are 
not    unprepared   for    this   when   we    consider   that   one 
lecture  is  on  Ralph  Waldo   Emerson,  another   on  Sub- 
stance, and  a   third  on   what  concerns  Hinduism.       Of 
Emerson,  Lord  Gifford  remarks  that  he  "  inclines  to  the 
higher  or  subjective  pantheism ;  but  he  (Emerson)  will 
not    limit,    and    he    cannot     define.        Before    all    such 
questions  he  stands  uncovered  and  reverently  silent.      No 
proud  denial,  no  cynic  scoff,  no  heartless  sneer  escapes 
him  ;  and  without  a  theory  of  the  universe  he  clings  to  its 
moral  meaning."     This  is  certainly  well  said  as  regards 
Emerson ;    and    it    certainly    names    a    very    admirable 
catholic  attitude  as  regards  religion,  which  attitude,  not 
by  any  means  necessarily  pantheistic,  would  do  honour  to 
any  man,  Lord    Gifford,  Emerson,  or  another.       In  the 
lecture  on  Substance,  naturally,  we  are  in  presence  of  the 
arch-pantheist,  named  and  described  by  Lord  Gifford  as 
"  Benedictus  de  Spinoza,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  the 
philosophers  who  have  treated   of  substance."     Of  him, 
one  cannot  fail  to  see,  on  the  part  of  Lord  Gifford,  an 
even  familiar   knowledge.      If  substance  was  to  Spinoza 
God,  it  is  no   less  divine  to  Lord  Gifford ;  for  to  him 
God   is  the  all-pervading  substantiality  and   the  single 
soul  that  is  alone  present  everywhere.      Of  animals,  he 
says,  "  Their  mainspring  is  the  Eternal,  and  every  wheel 
and  every  pinion  is  guided  by  the  Infinite — and  there 
can  be  but  one  Infinite — this  is  the  root-thought  of  the 
fetichism  of  the  Indian  or  of  the  Hottentot ;  and  this  is 
what  the  Egyptian  felt  when  he  saw  sacredness  in  the 
crocodile,  in  the  ibis,  or  in  the  beetle.        Said   I  not " 


BEAHMANISM.  207 

(Lord  Gifford  exclaims) — "said  I  not  that  the  word 
substance  was  perhaps  the  grandest  word  in  any  language  ? 
There  can  be  none  grander.  It  is  the  true  name  of  God. 
Do  you  not  feel  with  me  that  it  is  almost  profane  to 
apply  the  word  Substance  to  anything  short  of  God  ? 
God  must  be  the  very  substance  and  essence  of  the 
human  soul.  The  human  soul  is  neither  self-derived  nor 
self-subsisting.  It  did  not  make  itself.  It  cannot  exist 
alone.  It  is  but  a  manifestation,  a  phenomenon.  It 
would  vanish  if  it  had  not  a  substance,  and  its  substance 
is  God.  But  if  God  be  the  substance  of  all  forces  and 
powers  and  of  all  beings,  then  He  must  be  the 
only  substance  in  the  universe  or  in  all  possible 
universes.  This  is  the  grand  truth  on  which  the  system 
of  Spinoza  is  founded,  and  his  whole  works  are  simply 
drawing  deductions  therefrom."  These  are  very  trenchant 
expressions ;  and  their  full  import  cannot  be  mistaken. 
As  a  single  sample  in  the  Indian  pantheistic  reference, 
I  may  quote  this  :  "  Whatever  Hinduism,  or  Brahmanism, 
may  have  latterly  or  in  its  bulk  become,  still  in  its 
purest  and  highest  essence  it  was  (indeed  I  think  it  still 
is,  and  I  am  glad  to  think  so)  a  monism,  a  monotheism, 
and  in  one  aspect  a  pantheism  of  a  pure  and  noble  kind. 
Pure  Brahmanism  knows  only  one  God,  indeed  only  one 
Being,  in  the  universe,  in  whom  all  things  consist  and 
exist." 

Now,  whatever  pantheism  may  be,  and  however  we 
may  be  disposed  to  regard  it,  surely  we  cannot  revolve 
in  mind  these  various  deliverances  of  Lord  Gifford's 
without  feeling  that  we  can  apply  to  him  his  own  words 
in  regard  of  Emerson :  "  Emerson,"  he  says,  "  is  not  dis- 
tinctively a  religious  writer ;  that  is  to  say,  he  does  not 
profess  to  teach  or  to  enforce  religion,  but  his  tone  is 
eminently  religious."  And  then  he  goes  on  to  say  that, 
do  as  we  may,  "  religion  will  not  be  separated  from  any- 


208  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

thing  whatever:  you  cannot  produce  and  you  cannot 
maintain  a  religious  vacuum,  and  if  you  could,  even 
secularism  would  die  in  it."  That  is  particularly  well 
said,  and  is  surely  a  great  truth.  We  are  too  apt,  each 
of  us,  to  concentrate  ourselves  into  our  own  abstractions. 
If  we  are  mathematicians,  we  will  be  mathematicians 
only,  or,  similarly,  chemists  only,  physiologists  only, 
botanists  only,  and  so  on.  Whereas  there  is  a  single 
concrete  for  which  all  abstractions  should  unite,  to 
which  they  should  all  tend,  and  in  which  they  should 
all  terminate.  And  that  is  religion,  not  religion  as  it  is 
a  dry  bone  of  divinity,  but  religion  as  it  is  the  vital 
breath  of  humanity.  You  might  as  well  expect  digestion 
in  independence  of  the  heart-beat,  as  foison  for  humanity, 
or  any  department  of  humanity,  in  independence  of 
religion.  That  is  the  truth  of  the  matter,  and  what 
Lord  Gifforcl  says  is  the  very  word  for  it :  Let  Secularism, 
once  for  all,  effect  its  religious  vacuum,  and  Secularism 
itself  will  die  in  it !  Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone ; 
and  neither  will  humanity  advance  on  the  understanding 
only.  Above  the  understanding  there  is  reason.  The 
understanding  distinguishes,  and  divides,  and  makes  clear 
the  many ;  but  it  is  reason  that,  in  vision  and  in  love, 
makes  us  all  one  -soul,  while  only  in  the  element  of 
religion  does  the  soul  find  breath.  "  There  is,"  says  Lord 
Gifforcl — "  there  is  an  eternal  and  unchangeable  system 
and  scheme  of  morality  and  ethics,  founded  not  on  the 
will,  or  on  the  devices,  or  in  the  ingenuity  of  man,  but 
on  the  nature  and  essence  of  the  unchangeable  God. 
The  individual  man,  Lord  GifTord  intimates,  may  worship 
"  the  phenomenon,  the  appearance ;  but  the  noumenon, 
the  substance  "  still  is,  and  still  is  the  truth :  "  it  is  a 
high  strain  of  Christianity  to  worship  only  the  eternal, 
the  immortal,  and  the  invisible."  In  these  and  other 
expressions    of    Lord    Gifford's,   we    have    observed    the 


MATERIALISM — ENTHUSIASM.  209 

occurrence  of  terms  which  are  strictly  and  technically 
philosophical.  He  opposes,  for  instance,  phenomenon  to 
noumenon,  and  appearance  to  substance.  "  Without  the 
true  doctrine  of  substance  and  of  cause,"  he  says  once, 
"  philosophy  would  be  a  delusion  and  religion  a  dream, 
for  true  philosophy  and  true  religion  must  stand  or  fall 
together;"  but  of  both  we  are  to  understand  "substance  " 
to  be  "  the  very  foundation-stone."  There  is  a  "  force 
behind  and  in  all  forces,"  an  "energy  of  all  energies." 
"  Nature  !  'Tis  but  the  name  of  an  effect.  The  cause  is 
God ! "  These  and  such  like  expressions  occur  again 
and  again  in  the  little  book  ;  and,  "  if  all  this  be  a  part 
of  metaphysics,"  Lord  Clifford  declares,  then  "metaphysics 
can  be  no  empty  and  barren  science."  Accordingly,  we 
rind  no  sympathy  here  with  the  mere  materialistic  views 
and  tendencies  of  the  present  day.  "  There  are  some 
who  say  and  think  " — we  may  quote  by  way  of  example 
— "  there  are  some  who  say  and  think  that  they  could 
find  in  the  grey  matter  of  the  brain  the  very  essence  of 
the  soul — to  such  materialists  the  proper  answer  is  to 
be  found  in  the  truths  of  ultimate  metaphysics.  Only 
go  deep  enough,  and  the  most  obstinate  materialist  may 
be  made  to  see  that  matter  is  not  all  the  universe. 
Mind  is  not  the  outcome  of  trembling  or  rotating 
atoms." — "  The  substance  and  essence  of  a  man  is 
his  reasonable  and  intelligent  soul." — "  The  substance 
of  all  forms,  of  all  phenomena,  of  all  manifestations, 
is  God." 

I  have  spoken  of  literature  in  connection  with  Lord 
Gifford;  and  there  are  many  keen  expressions  to  bear 
out  the  implication,  some  already  seen — such  phrases, 
namely,  as  "anointed  eyes,"  or  "shining  countenances;" 
or  "to  mete  with  the  measure  of  the  upper  sanctuary;" 
or  decisions  "straight  as  the  rays  that  issue  from  the 
throne  of  God;"  or  his  words  when  he  admonishes  his 

o 


210  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

brothers  of  the  Law,  ever,  in  the  first  place,  to  ascend 
and  meditate  on  the  "  moral  heights,"  whence  descending, 
he  assures  them,  "  their  pleading  robes,  in  the  Courts  of 
Jurisprudence,  will  shine  with  light  as  from  the  Mount 
of  Transfiguration."  I  have  spoken  also  of  philosophy 
in  connection  with  Lord  Gifford,  and  certainly  we  have 
seen  much  that  is  not  alone  an  acknowledgment  of 
philosophy,  but  is  itself  philosophy.  Still  it  is  not  to  be 
understood  that  I  would  wish  to  represent  Lord  Gifford, 
whether  in  literature  or  philosophy,  as  precisely  pro- 
fessional. For  both  he  has  splendid  endowments:  in 
both  he  has  splendid  accomplishments.  One  almost 
fancies  that  it  was  as  a  literary  man  he  began — witness, 
as  he  expresses  it,  the  "  fresh  and  startled  admiration," 
the  "  overflowing  enthusiasm  "  with  which  he  read 
Emerson.  "  That  enthusiasm,"  he  exclaims,  "  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  /  still  feel.  I  rejoice  to  think  that  my  early 
admiration  was  not  misplaced.  Time  with  his  ruthless 
mace  has  shattered  many  idols  of  a  fond  but  false 
worship.  But  let  us  thank  God  if  we  were  not  wholly 
idolators,  if  any  of  our  youthful  delights  are  delightful 
still,  if  some  of  the  morning  colours  are  unfaded,  and 
part  of  its  fine  gold  undimmed."  To  doubt  or  deny  the 
full  liberty  of  the  guild  in  the  teeth  of  such  expressions 
as  these,  which  syllable  the  very  vernacular  of  the  pre- 
cincts, trenches  very  closely  on  the  mere  invidious,  and 
pretty  well  reduces  to  foolishness  what  laudation  we 
have  already  expended.  Still,  with  all  natural  endow- 
ment and  all  acquired  accomplishment,  we  fancy  we 
catch,  here  and  there,  a  note  at  times  that  betrays  the 
Gentile,  the  Ephraimite,  the  visitant,  rather  than  the 
brother.  Lord  Gifford  tells  us  once,  for  example,  "  of 
sleight-of-hand,  of  cheiromancy,  as  it  is  called  ;  "  or,  again, 
we  hear  of  Henry  VI.,  "  that  drum-and-trumpet  thing," 
which   Shakespeare  had,  probably,  little  to  do  with,  as 


TECHNICAL  SHORTCOMINGS.  211 

being  yet  a  "whole;  drama  grandly  original!"  We  saw, 
some  time  ago,  too,  the  phrase,  "  the  higher  or  subjective 
pantheism."  Knowing  that  it  is  from  his  perusal  of 
Spinoza  thai  Lord  Gifford  has  derived  his  idea  of  pan- 
theism, one  has  difficulty  in  associating  "subjective"  with 
it.  One  thinks  that  a  subjective  pantheism  would  be, 
properly,  theism,  and  not  pantheism  at  all;  at  the  same 
time  that  one  knows  withal  that  there  is  no  more 
familiar  commonplace  in  philosophy,  than  the  fact  thai 
what  the  system  of  Spinoza  lacks  is  precisely  subjectivity. 
Familiar  acquaintance  with,  is  not,  in  truth,  exactly 
technical  knowledge  of,  Spinoza.  "We  are  accustomed  to 
this.  Statements  of  theories  by  admirers  of  their  authors, 
which  said  authors  would,  it  may  be,  have  been  some- 
what gratefully  perplexed  with  ;  finding  in  them,  perhaps, 
such  partial  accentuations  or  partial  extensions,  as,  with 
similar  partial  limitations  or  omissions,  made  their  own 
work  (so  called)  strange  to  them.  Such  will  not  prove  to 
readers  by  any  means  an  uncommon  experience.  In  the 
immediate  reference,  we  can  certainly  say  this,  that  the 
God  of  Lord  Gifford,  much  as  he  venerates  substance,  is 
only  very  questionably  the  God  of  Spinoza,  and  that 
Lord  Gifford,  had  he  been  familiar  with  what  we  may 
call  the  accepted  statistical  or  historical  return  of 
Spinoza,  would  have  written  of  him  from  considerably 
different  findings. 

But  "subjective"  is  not  only  objectionably  associated 
.with  pantheism  by  Lord  Gifford,  we  see  also  a  similar 
association  of  it  on  his  part  with  the  word  "higher." 
'•'The  higher  or  subjective  pantheism,"  it  is  said.  Hut, 
philosophically, — of  any  philosophical  system,  that  is, — 
the  association  of  "higher"  with  "subjective"  is  an 
association  that,  more  than  any  other,  perhaps,  in  these 
days,  grates.  It  is  the  objective  idealism,  tor  example, 
that,  to  all  metaphysical  ambition,,  is  the  higher,  and  not 


212  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

the  subjective.  To  Professor  Ferrier  it  was  little  short 
of  a  personal  insult  to  call  Ms  idealism  subjective  ! 

Another  point  in  this  connection  is  that  Lord  Gifford 
signalizes,  and  dwells  very  specially  on  the  "  learning " 
of  Emerson.  Now,  I  do  not  think  that  any  one,  formally 
and  fairly  a  member  of  the  guild,  however  much  he 
might  admire  Mr.  Emerson,  would  feel  prompted  to  call 
him  learned — if  learned,  that  is,  means  erudite,  technically 
and  scholastically  erudite.  Miscellaneously,  no  doubt, 
Mr.  Emerson  was  an  excellent  reader.  He  read  many 
books,  and  he  meditated  on  them.  But  he  also  walked 
in  the  woods,  and  meditated  there.  What  he  read,  too, 
was  mostly  in  English.  He  tells  us  himself  he  never 
read  an  alien  original  if  he  could  at  all  compass  a  trans- 
lation of  it.  Mr.  Emerson  nowise  suggests  himself  to 
us  in  his  books  as  a  professed  expert  in  languages, 
whether  ancient  or  modern.  Neither  are  we  apt  to 
think  of  him  as  a  student,  properly,  of  the  sciences,  or 
of  any  science.  Even  of  philosophy,  so  to  speak,  he  was 
no  entered  student, — into  what  deeps  and  distances  so- 
ever, and  by  what  means  soever,  his  intellectual  curiosity 
may  have  relatively  carried  him  ! 

Further,  in  regard  to  learning,  when  I  am  told  by  Lord 
Gifford  this :  "  He  (Mr.  Emerson)  has  edited  Greek  plays 
—  he  has  edited  several  Greek  standard  authors  !  "  I 
confess  I  am  astonished  at  my  own  ignorance !  (He  did 
write  a  preface  to  a  translation  of  Plutarch's  Morals.) 

This  is  to  be  said  in  the  end,  however :  That,  with 
whatever  discount,  Lord  Gifford  is  literary  and  philo- 
sophical, even  as  Mr.  Emerson  was  literary  and  philo- 
sophical. In  fact,  in  reading  these  lectures  of  Lord 
Gifford's,  we  are  constantly  reminded  of  Emerson.  Lord 
Gifford  would  seem  to  have  remained  so  persistently  by 
Emerson,  that  we  may  be  pardoned  if  we  conceive  him 
to  have  fallen,  at  times,  into  Emerson's  very  attitude,  and 


EMERSON  AND  CARLYLE.  213 

almost  taken  on  Emerson's  very  shape.  Again  and  again 
in  Lord  Gifford  it  is  as  though  we  heard  the  very  words 
of  Emerson,  and  in  their  own  peculiarity  of  cadence, 
rhythm,  or  even  music.  Lord  Clifford,  at  one  time,  must 
have  been  inflamed  for  Carlyle.  Nevertheless,  he  has 
dwelt  so  long  in  mildness  at  the  side  of  Emerson  that 
the  passionate  voice  of  Carlyle,  at  the  last,  hurts  him. 
So  it  is  that  he  says,  "  In  Emerson  is  no  savage  and 
vindictive  hatred ;  no  yells  for  the  extermination  of  the 
wicked  and  of  folly."  We  see  thus  that  gentleness  is 
more  to  Lord  Gifford  than  force.  That,  in  fact,  is  the 
grain  of  his  character ;  and  it  comes  out  again  and  again 
in  this  little  book.  How  he  rejoices  that  intercourse  with 
his  fellows,  for  example,  and  the  friction  of  a  formed 
society  had,  as  regards  himself,  made  "  an  humbler  and 
more  modest  man  of  him  than  he  had  been  before."  A 
test  that  of  the' amount  and  quality  of  the  original  sub- 
stance ;  for  it  is  precisely  such  a  situation  and  precisely 
such  influences  that  make  the  shallow  man  shallower. 
It  is  characteristic  of  this  sound  humanity  in  Lord 
Gifford  that  he  would  have  us  "  regard  our  neighbour's 
joy  and  sorrow,"  even  "  his  wealth  and  rank,"  "  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  as  if  they  were  our  own."  That  is  an 
admirable  touch,  the  wealth  and  rank  !  It  is  a  fact  that 
the  man  who  looks  through  the  palings  need  not  envy 
the  man  on  the  other  side  of  them.  The  scenery,  the 
woods,  the  hills,  the  stately  architecture,  are  as  much  his 
as  they  are  their  owner's,  and  in  a  free  transparency  of 
mind  unsmutched  by  a  single  care.  "  Every  sky,"  says 
Lord  Gifford,  and  there  is  his  heart's  love  to  nature  in 
the  word,  "  gleams,  morning  and  evening,  with  loveliness 
upon  us,  if  we  but  lift  our  eye  to  it,  even  from  the  city 
lanes!'  So  it  is  that  his  fellow  is  the  core  always  of 
the  thought  of  Lord  Gifford.  He  rejoices  in  "  the  pro- 
phecy of  the  future,"  "  in  every  high  and  holy  aspiration," 


214  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  ELEVENTH. 

and  sympathizes  "  in  every  effort  to  elevate  the  character 
and  improve  the  condition  of  man."  Lord  Gifford  is 
himself  (in  a  slightly  different  sense)  manly  withal.  "  I 
am  here  to-night,"  he  says  to  his  audience  on  one  occa- 
sion, "  freely  and  frankly  to  talk  with  you,  man  to  man, 
as  friend  with  friend  ;  "  and  there  is  even  humour  in  him. 
"  An  old  Scottish  lawyer,"  he  remarks,  "  quaintly  said, 
'  You  cannot  'poind  for  charity,'  and  so  you  cannot,  by 
any  form  of  diligence,  compel  kindness,  or  consideration, 
or  courtesy."  As  is  only  to  be  expected,  a  wise,  an  open, 
and  a  liberal  tolerance  is  another  characteristic  of  the 
humanity  of  Lord  Gifford.  He  will  not  have  us  forget 
that  "  The  Church  was  the  last  bulwark  of  humanity  in 
the  Dark  Ages,"  that  "  the  Church,  and  the  Church  alone, 
was  the  home  of  learning  and  the  guardian  of  letters," 
and  that  she  took  always  "  the  poor  and  forsaken  to  her 
bosom."  "  To  the  everlasting  praise  of  the  Catholic 
Church  be  it  said,"  he  cries,  "  she  never  knew  any 
difference  between  rich  and  poor,  between  the  nobly  born 
and  the  lowly  born,  but  welcomed  all  alike  to  her  loving 
though  somewhat  rigid  arms :  to  her  every  one  horn  at 
all  was  well  born."  Yet  it  is  with  comment  on  the 
bigotry  and  persecutions  of  this  same  Church  and  of  his 
favourite  St.  Bernard  that  he  says,  "  Truth  passes  like 
morning  from  land  to  land,  and  those  who  have  sat  all 
night  by  the  candle  of  tradition  cannot  exclude  the  light 
which  streams  through  every  crevice  of  window  or  of 
wall."  It  gladdens  him,  even  in  the  same  mood  of 
enlightenment,  to  see  "  some  old  prejudice  given  way, 
some  new  view  got  of  the  perfect  and  the  fair."  That 
is  enlightenment  akin  to  the  Aufklarung,  to  the  en- 
lightenment of  name,  which,  of  course,  is  good  so  far  as 
it  is  enlightened ;  but  here  is  the  substantial  enlighten- 
ment. "  A  few  words  now,"  says  Lord  Gifford,  "  on  the 
miracles  of  Saint  Bernard.      For  [in  strong  italics]  he  did 


MESMERISM.  215 

work  miracles — attested  by  scores  of  eye-witnesses,  whose 
testimony  nothing  but  judicial  blindness  can  withstand." 
How  explain  them?  "The  Talisman  is  [in  small  capitals] 
Faith  !  "  "All  things  are  possible  to  him  that  belie veth  !  " 
But  then,  adds  Lord  Gifford :  All  "  is  closely  connected 
with  the  modern  phenomena  of  mesmerism,"  etc.  It  is, 
perhaps,  too  late  in  the  day  for  any  one  to  dispute  or 
deny  certain  contraventions  of  the  usual  on  the  part  of 
mesmerism ;  but  this  was  not  so  at  first.  The  ordinary 
routine  of  common  sense,  which  alone  was  philosophy  to 
the  Aufgeklarter,  the  man  of  enlightenment  then, — in  his 
freedom  from  prejudice  and  his  hatred  of  the  lie, — the 
ordinary  routine  of  common  sense  could  not  be  said  to 
be  interrupted  without  a  pang  to  the  heart  of  this 
Aufgeklarter  in  the  beginning,  at  the  stupidity  of  the 
vulgar,  caught  ever  by  some  new  trick  !  It  is  told  of 
Ebenezer  Elliott,  the  Corn  Law  Rhymer, — a  warm-hearted, 
honest,  able,  perfectly  admirable  man  in  his  day,  but  still 
something  of  that  day's  Philistine,  or  something  of  that 
day's  Aufgeklarter, — that  he  was  loud  in  his  denuncia- 
tions of  mesmerism  as  mere  "  collusion  and  quackery,"  but 
that  he  unwarily  undertook  to  stake  the  question  on  trial 
of  himself.  "  Accordingly  the  poet,"  says  the  narrator  and 
the  operator,  a  man  whom  I  personally  knew,  "  sat  down 
in  his  chair,  and  the  moment  my  hand  came  in  contact 
with  his  head,  he  shrunk  as  if  struck  by  a  voltaic  pile, 
uttered  a  deep  sigh,  fell  back  upon  his  chair,  and  all  con- 
sciousness fled  from  him."  We  are  not  surprised  to 
hear,  nevertheless,  that  the  poet  (Elliott  himself),  alone 
of  the  whole  company,  remained  unconvinced  :  he  only 
"  rubbed  his  eyes,"  and  "  would  have  it  that  he  had 
fallen  asleep  from  exhaustion."  Lord  Gifford,  then,  has 
still  the  substantial  enlightenment  that  is  open  to  all 
evidence,  and  will  not  reject,  because  of  physical  facts, 
others  which  happen  to  be  psychical. 


216  GIFFORD  LECTURE  TH3  ELEVENTH. 

And  with  this  I  will  conclude  the  picture,  trusting 
that  you  will  find  it  only  natural  and  sufficiently  in  place 
that,  with  this  little  book  before  me — and  the  informa- 
tion it  extended — I  conceived  an  introductory  lecture  on 
the  Founder  of  this  Chair  only  my  duty,  and  the  rather 
that  it  necessarily  involved  much  of  the  matter  of  Natural 
Theology. 


GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  TWELFTH. 

A  settlement  for  faith  Lord  Gifford's  object — Of  our  single  theme 
the  negative  half  now— Objections  to,  or  refutations  of,  the 
proofs — Negative  not  necessarily  or  predominatingly  modern, 
Kant,  Darwin — The  ancient  negative,  the  Greeks,  Pythagoreans, 
Ionics,  Eleatics,  Heraclitus,  Empedocles,  Democritus,  (Bacon), 
Anaxagoras,  Socrates,  Sophists,  Diagoras,  Aristotle,  Aristoxenus, 
Dicaearchus,  Strato,  (Hume,  Cudworth),  Aristophanes,  etc., — 
Rome — Modern  Europe,  France,  Hume  and  the  seventeen 
atheists — Epochs  of  atheism — David  Hume,  his  influence — To 
many  a  passion  and  a  prejudice — Brougham,  Buckle— Style  ! — 
Taste  ! — Blair — Hume's  taste,  Pope,  Shakespeare,  John  Home 
— Othello — The  French  to  Hume — Mr.  Pope  ! — Some  bygone 
litterateurs — Personality  and  character  of  Hume  —  Jokes, 
stories,  Kant,  Aristotle — The  Scotch — The  Epigoniad — America 
— Germany — Generosity,  affection,  friendship,  hospitality — 
Smollett — Burke — but  Hume,  honest,  genuine,  and  even  re- 
ligious and  pious. 

We  must  now  address  ourselves  to  the  business  proper 
of  the  course.  I  think  our  shortest  statement  of  the 
general  object  of  Lord  Clifford  at  any  time  during  last 
session  was  this  :  "  Faith,  belief, — the  production  of  a 
living  principle  that,  giving  us  God  in  the  heart,  should, 
in  this  world  of  ours,  guide  us  in  peace."  I  probably  did 
enough  then,  by  way  of  general  explanation  and  illustra- 
tive detail,  to  enforce  and  give  its  own  due  proportions  to 
this  object  and  this  theme,  constitutive,  as  I  take  it  of 
the  entire  burden  of  the  bequest  itself.  But,  had  I  failed 
in  this,  had  my  statemenl  of  that  object — had  my  repre- 
sentation of  the  spirit  of  Lord  Gifford  in  setting  up  the 
exposition  of  that  object  as   the  single  and  sole  duty  of  a 


218  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

special  chair — had  statement  and  representation  been 
insufficient  and  incomplete,  we  should  have  had  to 
acknowledge  ample  compensation  and  satisfactory  relief 
in  what  we  saw,  in  our  last  lecture,  of  expressions  of 
Lord  Gifford's  own.  Be  the  language  of  the  Bequest 
what  it  may,  that  little  book,  with  its  seven  lectures,  as 
we  may  say,  on  law,  ethics,  and  religion,  presents  us  with 
the  full  length  Lord  Gifford,  and  dispenses  us  from  any 
relative  doubt. 

Further,  then,  now,  as  regards  our  treatment  of  the 
theme  prescribed  to  us.  I  also  explained  last  session 
that  I  took  the  theme  itself  precisely  as  it  ivas  prescribed. 
That  theme,  I  said,  is  "  Natural  Theology  and  the  proofs 
for  the  Being  of  a  God.  These  proofs  I  follow  historic- 
ally, while  the  reflection  at  the  same  time  that  we  have 
still  before  us  what  Lord  Gifford  calls  the  only  science, 
the  science  of  infinite  being,  may  bring  with  it  a  certain 
(complementary)  breadth  and  filling."  "  This  is  one  half 
of  my  enterprise.  The  other  half,  the  negative  half, 
shall  concern  the  denial  of  the  proofs.  This  session 
(I  said  then),  I  confine  myself  to  the  affirmative.  Next 
session,  I  shall  conclude  with  what  concerns  the  negative. 
In  this  way  we  shall  have  two  correspondent  and  comple- 
mentary halves :  one  irenical,  and  the  other  polemical ; 
one  with  the  ancients,  and  the  other  with  the  moderns. 
For  I  shall  bring  the  affirmative  half  historically  down 
only  " — only,  in  fact,  to  within  sight  again  of  liaymund 
of  Sabunde. 

We  have  to  understand,  therefore,  that  we  have  now 
seen  the  affirmative  of  our  whole  theme — the  rise,  namely, 
and  progress  of  the  proofs  or  arguments  for  the  being  of 
God  as  they  are  thetically  presentant  in  history  ;  and 
what  remains  for  us  at  present  is  the  exposition  and 
discussion  of  the  negative.  We  have  to  see,  that  is,  what 
objections  or  refutations  have  been  brought  forward  in 


KANT DAEWIN.  219 

regard  of  the  proofs ;  and  we  have  to  consider  as  well 
what  weight  attaches  to  these  objections,  or  what  cogency 
follows  these  refutations.  It  appears  also  that  we  are 
now  to  find  ourselves  only  in  the  modern  world.  This 
does  not  mean,  however,  that  we  are  to  regard  the 
modern  world  as  only  negative  in  respect  of  the  being 
of  a  God,  and  never  affirmative.  That  would  be  a 
singular  result  of  monotheism,  universal  now,  as  opposed 
to  polytheism,  all  but  universal  then.  The  reverse  is  the 
truth.  Up  to  within  a  score  of  years  or  so  we  may  say 
that  modern  writers  on  religion,  while  countless  in  num- 
bers, were,  with  but  few  exec]  it  inns,  affirmative  to  a  man. 
And  this  we  feel  we  can  hold  to  in  spite  of  Kant  and  his 
Kritih  of  1781  ;  for  Kant,  whatever  his  negative  may  he, 
has  his  own  affirmative  at  last.  It  is  only  since  Mr. 
Darwin  that,  as  the  phrase  goes,  atheism  has  set  in  like  a 
flood.  It  was  not,  then,  because  of  relative  numbers 
that  we  made  the  ancients  affirmative  and  the  moderns 
negative  in  regard  to  the  belief  in  a  God.  The  principle 
of  determination  did  not  lie  there  at  all.  What  alone 
was  considered  in  the  laying  out  of  our  theme  was  the 
historical  course  and  fortune  of  the  proofs  themselves. 

And  if  the  modern  world  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be 
considered  exclusively  or  predominatingly  negative ;  so 
neither  is  the  ancient  world  to  be  any  more  considered 
exclusively  or  predominantly  affirmative.  There  were 
atheists  then  quite  as  well  as  now.  I  suppose,  indeed, 
to  the  bulk  of  the  Grecian  public,  every  philosopher 
before  Socrates  was  an  atheist,  not  even  excepting  the 
Pythagoreans.  Thales  and  the  other  Ionics  are,  as 
Hylozoists,  nothing  but  atheists;  while  to  call  the 
Eleatics  and  Heraclitus  pantheists  is  tantamount,  for  all 
that,  to  an  admission,  as  their  doctrines  were,  that  they 
were  atheists.  Empedocles  was  no  better.  Democritus 
could  point  to  the  superhuman  powers  he  believed  in,  as 


220  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

it  were  in  the  air ;  but  still  a  nature  built  up  by  atoms 
was  his  G-od,  no  matter  that,  as  Bacon  maintains,  the 
atoms  of  the  atomists  were  so  very  immaterial  that  an 
actual  atom  no  one  had  ever  seen — no  one  ever  could  see. 
Then  Anaxagoras  with  the  principal  Sophists,  even  Socrates 
himself,  had  been  publicly  arraigned  as  atheists.  Diagoras, 
in  the  time  of  Aristotle,  became  an  atheist  in  consequence 
of  a  real  or  supposed  wrong  unretributed  by  the  gods, 
and  was  known  and  named,  and  is  still  familiar  to  us  in 
our  books,  as  Diagoras  the  atheist.  Aristotle  himself 
hardly  escaped  a  similar  imputation ;  which,  besides,  his 
own  school  in  the  end  would  only  have  justified ;  for 
almost  every  member  of  it,  at  least  in  the  second  genera- 
tion, gave  more  and  more  breadth  to  what  naturalistic 
doctrine  had  taken  birth  in  it.  Aristoxenus,  for  example, 
held  that  "  the  soul  was  but  a  certain  tension  or  intension 
of  the  body  itself,  like  what  is  called  music  on  the  part 
of  strung  cords  ;  "  while  Dicaearchus,  another  Aristotelian, 
declared  the  soul  to  be  "  only  an  idle  name  and  nothing 
but  the  body,  which,  one,  single  and  simple,  acts  and  feels 
by  organization  of  nature."  Later  than  these,  too,  there 
was,  above  all,  Strato,  surnamed  Physicus,  and  physicus 
is  really  equivalent  to  materialist  or  atheist,  not  but  that 
two  of  our  modern  authorities  in  this  reference  differ, 
Hume  declaring  "  Strato's  atheism  the  most  dangerous  of 
the  ancient,"  and  Cudworth  maintaining  atheism  at  all  to 
be  no  necessity  of  the  position  ;  a  view,  however,  to  which 
he  has  been  simply  won  over  by  persuading  himself  that 
what  unconscious  spontaneity  Strato  ascribes  to  matter 
is  no  more  than  his  own  "  plastic  nature,"  and  only  saves 
God,  as  is  the  very  intention  of  that  plastic  nature,  from 
any  derogation  of  direct  intromission  with  the  inquination 
of  sense.  But  Cudworth's  view  is  no  more  the  view  of 
the  ancients  than  it  is  that  of  Hume ;  for  if  we  look  to 
Cicero    and  Plutarch  alone,   we   shall    be  satisfied   that 


HUME  AND  THE  ATHEISTS.  2  21 

Strato  had  no  God  or  principle  of  design  in  his  belief,  but 
referred  all  in  nature  to  mere  mechanical  movement,  to 
accident  and  chance.  Strato,  according  to  Diogenes 
Laertius,  became  so  thin  in  the  end  that  he  slipped  away 
into  death  quite  insensibly — truly  a  tcnuitas  mira,Q&  is 
the  Latin  of  it  ! 

It  is  evident  from  all  this  that  a  negative  in  regard  to 
the  existence  of  God  is  by  no  means  to  be  conceived  as- 
confined  to  the  modern  world.  Among  the  Greeks,  at 
all  events,  in  the  ancient  world  it  existed  in  an  undeni- 
able plenitude.  Nor  is  the  reason  of  this  remote  or 
hidden  from  us.  Polytheism  was  dying  out;  the  popular 
religion  had  ceased  to  be  believed  in.  And  Aristophanes, 
who  was  even  intolerant  and  a  bigot  in  his  tenacity  for 
the  old,  is  as  much  a  proof  of  the  fact  as  the  very 
Diagoras  to  whose  atheism  he  alludes,  and  whom,  as 
proclaimed  by  law,  he  names.  Nothing  can  exceed  the 
derogatory  familiarity  of  tone  with  which,  at  all  times, 
he  treats  the  very  gods  in  whom  he  would  believe,  and  on 
whom  he  would  depend.  After  Pericles,  indeed,  irreligion 
and  atheism  become  in  Greece  rampant  ;  nor  there  alone. 
Later,  it  is  a  like  manifestation  we  witness  in  Pome  on 
the  fall  of  the  republic.  And,  later  still,  we  have  similar 
characteristics  in  Europe,  especially  France,  before  the 
outbreak  of  the  revolution.  David  Hume,  who,  in  his 
inmost  soul  thought  nothing  greater  than  a  named  writer 
— David  Hume,  in  Paris,  to  his  own  admiration,  sitting- 
radiant,  at  table,  among  the  foremost  bookmen  in  the 
whole  world  then,  could  not  help  letting  slip  his  innocent 
belief  that  there  were  no  such  things  as  atheists,  that  he 
had  never  met  any — how  he  must  have  been  astounded 
at  the  reply — that  he  must  have  been  very  unfortunate 
so  long,  for  he  was  at  that  moment  in  the  midst  of 
seventeen  of  them  ! 

Whether  in  Greece  or  in   Rome,  then,  whether  in  the 


222  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

ancient  or  the  modern  world,  there  are  epochs  of  atheism, 
; u  id  always  from  similar  causes.  In  Greece,  as  I  have 
said,  the  popular  religion  had,  among  many,  ceased  to  be 
believed  in ;  and  with  religious  disbelief,  political  and 
social  corruption  went  hand  in  hand.  Even  Sparta, 
which  was  the  manly  heart  of  Greece,  under  such  influ- 
ences, fell  away  into  individual  greed  and  personal 
selfishness.  The  spot  of  earth  from  which  Leonidas  and 
his  three  hundred  marched  to  their  deaths  is  hardly 
known  now.  As  it  was  in  Greece,  so  was  it  in  Rome, 
in  modern  Europe,  France — religious  disbelief,  political 
equivocation,  social  laxity,  portend  historical  ruin.  With 
all  that  can  be  said,  however,  of  irreligion  in  ancient  as 
well  as  in  modern  times,  it  is  still  specially  to  these 
latter  that  we  turn  for  our  negative ;  and  for  the  reason 
that  in  them  only  is  it  first  fairly  formulated  to  our  present 
ideas.      The  same  reason  leads  us  to  begin  with  Hume. 

David  Hume  stands  out  historically  as  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  influential  figures  of  modern  times.  In 
the  philosophical  reference,  he  constitutes  for  the  various 
views  a  veritable  rendezvous,  a  veritable  meeting-place, 
if  only  variously,  for  the  start  apart  again.  He  is  a 
knot  -  point,  as  it  were  a  ganglion  in  philosophy,  into 
which  all  converge,  from  which  all  diverge  into  the  wide 
historical  radiation  that  even  now  is.  Scotch  philo- 
sophy, and  French  philosophy,  and  German  philosophy, 
all  are  in  connection  with  him.  Under  the  teaching 
especially  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  he  is  at  this  moment 
English  philosophy.  From  him  come  Adam  Smith,  and 
Eicardo,  and  whatever  their  names  involve.  Hume  is 
the  guide  of  the  politician  ;  through  the  economists  he 
is  the  spirit  of  our  trade  and  commerce,  and  I  know  not 
but,  in  what  are  called  advanced  vicics,  he  lies  at  this 
moment  very  near  even  the  heart  of  the  Church.  At 
all  events,  he  is  to  the  mass  of  the  enlightened,  the  Auf- 


STYLE.  223 

geklart,  their  high  priest  still;  his  books  are  their  Bible. 
It  is  really  surprising  to  how  many  Hume  is,  or  has 
been,  a  passion  and  a  prejudice  almost  in  their  very 
hearts.  Ymi  will  find  articles  in  the  Reviews,  especially 
of  some  years  back, — in  the  Westminster  perhaps,— that 
talk  with  baited  breath  of  Hume  as  though  lie  were 
divine.  I  recollect  of  one  in  particular  that,  engaged 
in  running  down  Ceorge  IV.,  compared  that  mon- 
archical imposition  with  sundry  celebrities  near  his  own 
time,  and  ended  with  a  reference  in  that  sense  to  Hume, 
a  reference  that  seemed  simply  List  in  its  mockin^  feel- 
ing of  an  utter  contrast.  The  article,  indeed,  might  have 
been  written  by  Lord  Brougham  himself,  who,  from  what 
we  know,  alone  of  all  mankind,  possibly  could  have  con- 
joined the  worship  of  Hume  with  the  application  of  as 
miuh  in  reduction  of  Gentleman  George.  Mill,  and 
Mackintosh,  and  Macaulay,  and  William  Gifford,  and 
Francis  Jeffrey,  were  all  intense  admirers  of  Hume ;  but 
I  question  if  any  one  of  them  would  not  have  felt  lost 
in  his  wits  for  a  moment  at  so  grotesque  and  absurd  a 
proposition  as  the  bringing  together  of  two  such  dis- 
parates! I  know  only  one  man  since  Brougham  who 
could  have  united  with  him  as  well  in  the  prostration  of 
the  worship  as  in  the  loftiness  of  the  parallel.  It  is 
possible  to  find  no  pair  or  peer  to  Lord  Brougham  here 
but  Thomas  Henry  Buckle.  1  do  believe  he.  too,  in  his 
big  way,  might  have  thought  it  apt — might  have  risen 
into  the  moral  sublime  even — indignantly  to  remark  on 
the  mockery  and  degradation  in  the  comparison  of 
George  IV.  with  Hume! 

But,  further,  of  this  prejudice  or  passion  for  David 
Hume,  it  used  to  be  a  common  experience  to  find 
enthusiastic  examples  of  it,  not  only  among  the  specially 
learned,  but  even  among  those  of  our  men  of  business 
who   knew  what    a    book    was.      Sir    Daniel    Sandford.   in 


224  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

certain  Dissertations  of  his,  at  one  time  popularly  pub- 
lishing in  parts,  spoke  of  "  the  spotless  style  of  Hume  ; " 
and  just  for  the  word,  many  scores  of  delighted  Auf- 
gehldrters  would  have  been  ready  to  die  for  him  (Sand- 
ford).  Style,  in  fact,  was  for  long,  and  very  much  owing 
to  David,  the  single  thought  that  was  present  to  every 
man  the  moment  he  took  a  book  in  hand.  Addison's 
style  was,  of  course,  the  ne  plus  ultra.  But  there  was 
the  delightful  style  of  Goldsmith,  too,  and  the  excellent 
style  of  Eobertson.  There  were  the  stilts  of  Johnson, 
and  the  wood  of  Adam  Smith.  There  was  the  easy,  lax, 
complacent  style  of  Fielding,  and  the  pointed  style  of 
Smollett.  There  was  the  finical  style  of  Blair,  and  the 
measured  style  of  Gibbon — but,  oh,  the  style  of  Hume, 
"  the  spotless  style  of  Hume  ! "  And  so  style  was  the 
one  consideration  :  style  was  the  watchword.  We  read 
for  the  style,  and  it  was  by  the  style  we  judged.  We 
were  not  at  all  exigent  about  the  matter,  if  the  form,  the 
style,  the  words  but — as  we  said,  indeed — -flowed.  That 
flow  was  enough  for  us,  provided,  as  the  master  insisted, 
it  were  but  "  smooth "  enough,  "  harmonious  "  enough, 
"  correct "  enough,  "  perspicuous  "  enough.  It  was  to 
enjoy  that  flow  mainly  that,  business  apart,  we  took  up 
a  book  at  all.  Of  course  we  expected  some  matter  in  a 
book,  something  of  information,  say.  Still,  if  with  that, 
with  something  pleasing,  that  ran  along  in  the  telling, 
there  was  but  style — style  and  the  certainty  of  the 
writer's  enlightenment — we  somght  for  nothing  more.  We 
sought  for  nothing  more — that  is,  as  pupils  of  Hume — 
than  pleasing  information,  antireligious  enlightenment, 
and  literary  style,  And  I  should  just  like  to  ask  Mr. 
Huxley  if,  with  his  will,  there  should  be  anything  else 
than  that  still. 

It  is  in  this  way  we  see  how  much,  in  the  time  of 
Hume,  and   after   him,   depended   on   taste.      Almost  it 


TASTE — BLAIR.  225 

seemed  as  though,  did  we  but  cultivate  taste,  the  world 
would  be  well.  But  what  taste  was  it  that  was  to  be 
cultivated  ?  There  are  certain  formal  essays  of  Hume, 
there  are  certain  little  propos  of  Hume,  scattered  every- 
where, that  can  leave  us  no  difficulty  in  that  regard. 
And  were  there  any  difficulty,  there  is  Dr.  Hugh  Blair 
with  his  Lectures  on  Rhetoric  and  the  Belles  Lettres, 
to  settle  it.  Dr.  Hugh  Blair  is  a  kind  of  henchman  to 
Hume ;  and  he  has  formally  set  himself  to  the  business 
of  formally  teaching  the  principles  of  Hume,  and  even  of 
formally  representing  them, — I  mean  on  Taste,  leaving 
his  clerical  principles  completely  under  shelter.  To  that 
latter  effect,  indeed,  Blair  can  produce  a  certificate  under 
the  hand  of  even  Hume  himself.  "  This  city," *  meaning 
Edinburgh,  says  Hume,  "can  justly  boast  of  other  signal 
characters,  whom  learning  and  piety,  taste  and  devotion, 
philosophy  and  faith,  joined  to  the  severest  morals  and 
most  irreproachable  conduct,  concur  to  embellish.  One 
in  particular,  with  the  same  hand  by  which  he  turns 
over  the  sublime  pages  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  Demos- 
thenes and  Cicero,  is  not  ashamed  to  open  with  reverence 
the  sacred  volumes  ;  and  with  the  same  voice  by  which, 
from  the  pulpit,  he  strikes  vice  with  consternation,  he 
deigns  to  dictate  to  his  pupils  the  most  useful  lessons  of 
rhetoric,  poetry,  and  polite  literature."  This,  as  we  see, 
is  prettily  comprehensive ;  and  Hume  must  have  plumed 
himself  on  his  success  in  having  touched  up  in  it  a 
sufficiently  good  character  for  Dr.  Blair  —  even  of  a 
Sunday.  But  still,  I  doubt  not,  "  polite  literature " 
forms  the  keynote  in  the  combination  to  Hume.  Polite 
literature,  taste :  it  is  probable  that  David  Hume,  super- 
stition apart,  thought  of  nothing  more  constantly.  I  do 
not  know,  however,  that  we  now-a-days  would  quite 
approve  of  what  was  to  him  polite  literature,  of  what 

1  Burton,  ii.  470. 
P 


226  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

to  him  was  taste.  In  these  respects  Hume,  like  most 
of  his  contemporaries  in  truth,  was  completely  French. 
Polish  was  the  word ;  human  nature  in  the  raw  was 
simply  barbarous :  beards  were  remnants  from  the  woods 
— and  even  the  hair  on  our  heads  was  a  growth.  We 
could  not  be  shaved  close  enough,  and  wigs  were  indis- 
pensable ;  wigs  were  civilisation — wigs  and  ruffles  !  So, 
the  words  from  our  lips,  from  our  pens,  would  be  smooth, 
correct,  perspicuous.  This  was  the  very  proper  way  in 
which  Hume  felt.  He  was,  in  a  literary  regard,  not 
what  we  call  a  Philistine,  a  man  of  the  outside,  who 
knows  prose  only,  but  what  the  Germans  call  a  PMlister, 
a  narrowly  fastidious,  airily-refined  formalist.  To  him 
Mr.  Pope,  as  a  poet,  had  carried  polish  to  its  uttermost 
limit,  and  Shakespeare  was  a  barbarian.  Apropos  of 
Mr.  John  Home  and  his  tragedy  of  Agis  (how  many  of 
us  know  that  there  was  ever  any  such  tragedy  in  exist- 
ence ;  for  practically  it  is  very  certainly  out  of  existence 
now  ?) — of  this  Agis,  Hume  writes  from  Ninewells,  on 
the  18th  of  February  1751  :  " 'Tis  very  likely  to  meet 
with  success,  and  not  to  deserve  it ;  for  the  author  tells 
me  he  is  a  great  admirer  of  Shakespeare,  and  never  read 
Eacine ! "  Some  three  or  four  years  later  he  writes 
again :  "  As  you  are  a  lover  of  letters,  I  shall  inform  you 
of  a  piece  of  news,  which  will  be  agreeable  to  you —  We 
may  hope  to  see  good  tragedies  in  the  English  language.  A 
young  man  called  Hume  (Home  was  so  pronounced  then), 
a  clergyman  of  this  country,  discovers  a  very  fine  genius 
for  that  species  of  composition.  Some  years  ago  he 
wrote  a  tragedy  called  Agis,  which  some  of  the  best 
judges,  such  as  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  Sir  George  Lyttleton, 
Mr.  Pitt,  very  much  approved  of.  I  own,  though  I 
could  perceive  fine  strokes  in  that  tragedy,  I  never  could 
in  general  bring  myself  to  like  it ;  the  author,  I  thought, 
had  corrupted  his  taste  by  the  imitation  of  Shakespeare. 


SHAKESPEARE JOHN  HOME.  227 

But  the  same  author  lias  composed  a  new  tragedy 
(Douglas);  and  here  he  appears  a  true  disciple  of  Sophocles 
and  Eacine.  I  hope  in  time  he  will  vindicate  the  Eng- 
lish stage  from  the  reproach  of  barbarism  "  (Burton,  i. 
392).  Then,  some  three  years  later  still,  he  writes  to 
Adam  Smith :  "  I  can  now  give  you  the  satisfaction 
of  hearing  that  the  play  (Douglas),  though  not  near  so 
well  acted  in  Covent  Garden  as  in  this  place,  is  likely 
to  be  very  successful.  Its  great  intrinsic  merit  breaks 
through  all  obstacles.  When  it  shall  be  printed,  I  am 
persuaded  it  will  be  esteemed  the  best  and,  by  French 
critics,  the  only  tragedy  of  our  language."  The  letter 
winds  up  with — "I  have  just  now  received  a  copy  of 
Douglas  from  London ;  it  will  instantly  be  put  in  the 
press"  (Burton,  ii.  17).  No  doubt,  many  contradictions 
and  absurdities  that  have  happened  in  this  world  may 
well  be  wondered  at ;  but  surely  a  greater  contradiction 
and  absurdity  than  this  at  the  hands  of  Hume — precisely 
the  one  man  in  this  world  who  was  well  assured  that  it 
was  perfectly  impossible  for  him  (above  all,  in  any  such 
matters)  to  commit  or  perpetuate  any  such  thing  as  a 
contradiction  and  absurdity — surely,  just  this,  for  all 
that,  is  the  very  greatest  contradiction  and  absurdity  that 
ever  was  wondered  at,  or  that  ever  can  be  wondered  at. 
When  we  examine  the  volume,  or  volumes,  called  Essays 
of  Hume,  we  shall  find  that  of  the  thirty-seven  dramatic 
pieces  commonly  printed  as  Shakespeare's,  only  three 
ever  occur  to  be  referred  to  there.  They  are  Pericles, 
Othello,  and  Julius  Caesar;  and  of  these  the  second  is 
actually  mentioned  twice.  In  the  essay  "  Of  Tragedy  " 
Hume  moralizes  in  this  way  :  "  Had  you  any  intention  to 
move  a  person  extremely  by  the  narration  of  any  event, 
the  best  method  of  increasing  its  effect  would  be  artfully 
to  delay  informing  him  of  it,  and  first  excite  his  curiosity 
and  impatience  before  you  let  him  into  the  secret.     This 


228  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

is  the  artifice  practised  by  Iago  in  the  famous  scene 
of  Shakespeare ;  and  every  spectator  is  sensible  that 
Othello's  jealousy  acquires  additional  force  from  his 
preceding  impatience,  and  that  the  subordinate  passion  is 
here  readily  transformed  into  the  predominant."  In  the 
essay  named  "  Of  the  Eise  and  Progress  of  the  Arts 
and  Sciences,"  again,,  near  its  close,  remarking  on  the 
encouragement  given  to  young  authors  in  their  first 
attempts,  as  leading  in  the  end  to  their  later  mature  and 
perfect  ones,  Hume  declares,  "  The  ignorance  of  the  age 
alone  could  have  given  admission  to  the  Prince  of 
Tyre ;  but  'tis  to  that  we  owe  '  the  Moor.' "  Besides 
four  lines  quoted  from  Julius  Caesar  without  direct 
name,  that  is  all  that  I  find  of  any  reference  to  Shake- 
speare in  the  whole  of  Hume's  Essays.  Of  the  doubts 
subsequently  thrown  on  the  amount  of  Shakespeare's 
authorship  in  the  Prince  of  Tyre,  Hume,  of  course, 
could  know  nothing  :  what  alone  he  had  in  mind  when 
he  wrote,  probably,  was  the  line  from  Dryden,  "  Shake- 
speare's own  muse  his  Pericles  first  bore."  Inferential!/, 
then,  we  have,  on  the  part  of  Hume,  so  far  gratitude  to 
Shakespeare,  and  the  praise  of  maturity  to  the  Othello. 
Shakespeare,  too,  must  be  allowed  to  be  indebted  to 
Hume  for  a  certain  amount  of  approbation  in  regard  to 
what  is  called  his  "  famous  scene."  Hume  says  "  the 
famous  scene  of  Shakespeare,"  as  though,  of  all  the  scenes 
of  Shakespeare,  it  was  the  "  famous  "  one ;  and  we  have 
thus,  and  generally,  on  his  part  testimony  to  the  great 
popularity  of  Shakespeare  even  in  his  day.  Of  course  it 
is  utterly  impossible  to  say  too  much  of  the  scene  in 
question ;  but  I  know  not  that  in  all  we  say  it  is  still 
the  praise  of  "  artfulness "  that  we  must  alone  mean. 
Artfulness  there  is — on  the  part  of  Iago  enormous  artful- 
ness ;  and  impatience  that  what  is  hinted  at  be  got  to, 
must   be   conceded,    as    at    least    one    element    in    that 


OTHELLO.  229 

appalling  convulsion  of  all  terrific  elements  that  is  then 
the  mind,  and  alone  the  mind,  of  the  perfectly  colossal 
Othello.  "What  we  have  before  us  are  not  the  mere 
miseries  and  suspicions  in  the  awakening  of  a  small 
human  thing  called  jealousy.  What  we  have  before  us 
are  the  throes  of  a  volcano — the  confusion,  anguish,  and 
bewilderment  of  a  vast  nature,  a  gigantic  soul,  that  in 
itself  was  too  mighty,  too  grand  and  great  ever  to  have  a 
doubt — of  one,  as  it  is  said,  "  not  easily  jealous,  but 
being  wrought,  perplexed  in  the  extreme ! "  It  is  the 
perplexity  of  this  great  nature  that  we  are  to  see,  and 
not  the  puling  pains  of  a  predominant  jealousy  only 
philosophically  increased  by  the  artful  excitation  of  a 
subordinate  and  preceding  impatience.  In  fact,  what  we 
are  to  wonder  at  is  not  art,  but  the  marvellous  nature, 
which  alone  we  are  to  see  breathing,  living,  moving 
throughout  the  scene. 

As  for  the  four  lines  from  Julius  Caesar,  they  occur  in 
section  7  of  the  Enquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of 
Morals :  "  Few  men  would  envy,"  says  Hume  there, 
"  the  character  which  Caesar  gives  of  Cassius — 

"  He  loves  no  plays, 
As  thou  dost,  Antony  ;  lie  hears  no  music  : 
Seldom  he  smiles  ;  and  smiles  in  such  a  sort, 
As  if  he  mocked  himself,  and  scorned  his  spirit 
That  could  he  moved  to  smile  at  anything." 

Now,  is  it  not  monstrous  that  any  man,  especially 
that  any  man  pretending  to  education  and  taste,  above 
all,  that  any  man  bearing  himself,  as  Hume  always 
emphatically  did,  to  be  the  very  Aristarchus,  the  very 
Simon  Pure  of  critical  taste  and  judgment,  should  have 
been  so  absolutely  blind  to  what  lay  there,  in  all  its 
reality  of  power,  immediately  before  his  very  eyes  ? 
Hume  had  seen,  and  we  may  say,  read  Othello,  the  very 
highest  height  in  that  kind,  it  may  be,  ever  by  mortal 


230  GIFFOED  LECTUKE  THE  TWELFTH. 

man  reached  yet ;  a  composition  in  its  very  nature  super- 
natural ;  and  his  whole  soul  is  not  seized,  and  entranced, 
and  wonder  -  stricken  by  what  he  sees  !  No  ;  very  far 
from  that,  he  is  rejoiced  that,  after  the  author  of  Agis, 
we  may  hope  at  last  to  see  good  tragedies  in  the  English 
language ;  we  may  hope  at  last  to  see  the  English  stage 
vindicated  from  the  reproach  of  barbarism  !  we  may  hope 
at  last  to  have  acquired  in  the  Douglas  of  John  Home 
what  he  is  persuaded  will  be  esteemed  the  best,  and,  by 
the  sole  true  critics,  the  only  tragedy  in  our  language  ! 
Othello  lies  before  David  Hume,  and  yet  Douglas  is  to  be 
the  best  and  only  tragedy  in  oar  language !  How  any 
man  could  write  down  even  these  four  lines  from  the 
Julius  Caesar,  and  yet  not  know  that  he  had  in  them  a 
communication  from  the  depths,  but  should  turn  from 
them  to  refresh  his  ear  (say)  with  the  tinkling,  ten- 
syllabled  couplets  that  give  us  the  usual  see-saw  of 
purling  streams,  and  enamelled  meads,  and  warbling 
choristers,  is  a  mystery  to  me  !  Hume  knew  something 
even  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  generally ;  he  speaks  of 
the  Volpone  of  Ben  Jonson,  and  of  how  Every  Man  in 
Ms  Humour  was  but  a  preliminary  essay  towards  it. — 
"  Had  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  been  rejected,"  he 
says,  "  we  had  never  seen  Volpone " — and  yet  in  his 
essay  of  "  Civil  Liberty  "  he  writes  thus  :  "  The  French  are 
the  only  people,  except  the  Greeks,  who  have  been  at 
once  philosophers,  poets,  orators,  historians,  painters, 
architects,  sculptors,  and  musicians :  with  regard  to  the 
stage,  they  have  excelled  even  the  Greeks,  who  have 
far  excelled  the  English  ! "  What  strange  infatuation  ! 
Shakespeare  is  so  alone  in  mere  dramatic  quality,  the 
breadth  and  depth  of  his  matchless  humanity  apart,  that 
there  is  not  in  all  ancient  times,  there  is  not  in  all 
modern  times,  one  solitary  individual  that  we  can  set 
beside  him. — I   heard   a   German   once   in  Paris   tell  a 


ME.  POPE.  231 

professor  there,  who  was  vaunting  his  Corneilles  and 
Ratines,  that  their  entire  French  literature  put  into  the 
scale  were  all  too  light  perceptibly  to  lift  a  Shakespeare 
from  the  spot ;  and  yet,  according  to  Hume,  the  French 
drama  far  surpasses  the  Greek,  and  the  Greek  far 
surpasses  the  English !  What  a  height  of  superiority 
Hume  must  have  feigned  for  the  Ratines  and  Corneilles 
over  Shakespeare  !  All  this,  however,  is  of  a  piece  with 
the  general  literary  judgment  of  the  period  in  which 
Hume  lived,  at  the  same  time  that  Hume  must  be  seen 
to  constitute  in  himself  the  very  extract,  and  summary, 
and  personification  of  that  judgment.  "A  hundred 
cabinetmakers  in  London  can  work  a  table  or  a  chair 
equally  well,"  says  Hume,  in  his  essay  "  Of  Eloquence," 
"  but  no  one  poet  can  write  verses  with  such  spirit  and 
elegance  as  Mr.  Pope."  Mr.  Pope  !  Mr.  Pope  is  very 
often  on  the  lips  of  David  Hume,  and  seldom  absent, 
very  possibly,  from  his  mind.  "  England,"  it  seems, 
according  to  him,  "  must  pass  through  a  long  gradation 
of  its  Spensers,  Johnsons,1  Wallers,  Drydens,  before  it 
arise  at  an  Addison  or  a  Pope ! "  At  Spensers  and 
Jonsons  in  this  rise,  one  wonders  a  little ;  and  one  is 
pleased  to  see  no  Shakespeares  or  Miltons  in  it ;  but 
why  no  Chaucers  ?  He,  at  least,  had  the  ten-syllabled 
clinks !  Well,  very  possibly,  if  Shakespeare  was  bar- 
barous to  Hume,  Chaucer  was  worse — very  possibly  he 
was  to  Hume  both  barbarous  and  unintelligible.  Then 
the  rise  from  Spensers,  Jonsons,  Drydens  to  Addison! 
Why  Addison's  verse — and  it  is  only  verse — is  now 
absolutely  unknown.  One  thing  one  wonders  at  in 
Hume  is  the  respect  with  which,  when  named,  he  seems 
always  to  have  for  Milton.  Some  time  ago  at  least,  I 
do  not  think  any  true  follower  of  Hume,  any  genuine 
aufgekliirt  cpirjon  of  his,  was  apt  to  imitate  his  master  in 
1  By  that  "Johnson,"  Hume  must  mean  Ben  Jonson. 


232  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

this.     Late  genuine  Aufgeklarters  of  the  Hume  stamp, 
for  the  most  part,  coupled  Milton  with  Shakespeare — in 
their  aversion.      Aufgeklart,  as  they  were,  enlightened, 
and  with  a  perfect  hatred  in  their  hearts  at  that  lie,  the 
Bible,  they  did  not  relish  the  subjects  and  the  beliefs  of 
Milton ;  and  they  disliked  blank  verse  !     These  were  the 
men  who  owned  no  music  in  verse,  who  could  not  read 
any  verse,  unless  it  murmured  on  in  regular  ten-syllabled 
clinking  couplets  without  a  break.     Any  break,  even  in 
these,  was  a  horror  to  them ;  and  doubly  so,  therefore, 
any   measure   else ;  for   any  measure  else   was  but   too 
often  broken  into  pauses,  and  was  without  that  charming, 
close-recurrent,  heroic  clink — was,  to  the  ear,  in  fact,  no 
better    than  without    clink    at  all.     So   it  was,  in  the 
main,  that  these  men  knew  only  two  poets,  Pope  and 
Goldsmith  ;  for  even  Dryden,  in  his  "  incorrectness,"  they 
said,  did  not  satisfy  them.     What  alone  satisfied  them 
was    "a  good    author,"   whom    they  could  take  up  (as 
recommended   by  Blair)   at   any  interval   of   leisure,  to 
beguile  them  by  the  murmur  of  the  manner  into  oblivion 
of  the  matter,  whether  in  verse  or  prose.     I  am  picturing 
a  class  of  men  that  are  not  so  common  now.     They  were 
all  what  is  called  well-informed  men,  and  had  a  taste 
for  the  reading  of  books.     With  individual  differences, 
they  were,  in  literary  taste,  very  much  as  I  say ;  and 
they  were,   in  religious  enlightenment,   or  anti-religious 
enlightenment,  still  more  as  I  say.     After  these  char- 
acteristics,  the   most   notable   remaining   one  was   their 
freedom  from   prejudice !       They  had   not    a   prejudice, 
these  men  ;  they  were  above  every  one  of  the  prejudices 
that  we,  common  men,  their  weaker  brothers,  truckled  to, 
as  in  regard  to — religion  in  the  first  place — but  then 
also  in  regard  to  place  of  birth,  or  country,  or  kindred,  or 
the  wise  saws  of  our  grandmothers  about  "  green  Yules," 
etc.     And  yet  these  all  opened,  these   calm,   free,   dis- 


PERSONALITY  AND  CHARACTER  OF  HUME.  233 

passionate  minds  were  the  least  calm,  the  least  free,  the 
least  dispassionate  —  the  most  narrow  and  the  most 
narrowly  intolerant  minds  that  could  well  be  found  in 
the  whole  gradation  of  humanity.  Now  of  these  men  Hume 
was  the  originating  prototype.  Of  course,  he  was  much 
larger  than  they.  Whatever  he  was,  he  was  in  that,  prime, 
original,  sole  and  single,  himself.  He  was  a  most  taking 
mass  of  good  nature,  too,  and  was  capable  of  generosity, 
— generosity  with  forethought,  generosity  with  prudence. 
Kant  was  surprised  that  Hume — to  him  "  the  fine  and 
gentle  Hume  " — should  have  been  "  a  great  four-square 
man."  Caulfield,  Lord  Charlemont,  speaks  of  "  the  un- 
meaning features  of  his  visage :  his  face  broad  and  fat, 
his  mouth  wide,  and  without  any  other  expression  than 
that  of  imbecility,  his  eyes  vacant  and  spiritless."  In 
person,  too,  he  was  so  remarkably  huge  and  corpulent 
that  he  says  himself,  his  "  companions,"  when  he  and 
they  were  backing  from  the  imperial  presence  at  the 
Vienna  Court,  "  were  desperately  afraid  of  his  falling  on 
them  and  crushing  them "  —  a  perfect  Gulliver  among 
the  Lilliputians  !  Then  we  are  to  fancy  that  prodigious 
corporeity  of  a  man  bashful  as  a  boy,  rustic  -  looking, 
uncouth,  as  shapeless  and  awkward  in  his  military 
uniform  as  a  train  -  band  grocer,  speaking  his  English 
ridiculously  "  in  the  broadest  Scotch  accent,  and 
his  French,  if  possible,  still  more  laughably,"  and 
that,  too,  in  "  a  creeping  voice "  that  piped  a  weak 
falsetto  !  It  will  only  complete  the  picture  if  we  fancy 
such  a  figure  as  this  of  Hume  at  the  opera  in  l'aris, — 
his  "  broad  unmeaning  visage  "  "  usually  rising,"  as  it  is 
said,  entre  deux  jolts  minois  (between  two  piquant  female 
faces), — or  better  still,  if  we  fancy  him,  in  the  Tableau  of 
the  Salon  of  a  night,  as  the  sultan  between  the  two 
sultanas,  sorely  put  to  it  as  to  what  to  say  to  them,  but 
desperately  ejaculating,  "  There  you  are,  ladies !  there  you 


234  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

are  !  "  and  yet,  more  desperately  thumping  his  stomach  or 
his  knees,  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  continuously,  till  one 
of  his  sultanas  jumps  up  impatiently,  muttering,  "  I  did 
just  expect  as  much  — the  man  is  only  fit  to  eat  a  veal ! " 
It  was  in  this  way  that  his  philosophic  dignity  suffered 
at  Paris ;  but  it  is  characteristic  of  the  man  that  he 
rather  liked  it ;  he  himself  "  seemed  to  be  quite  pleased," 
it  is  said,  "  with  this  way  of  living."  He  was  particu- 
larly simple  and  soft  in  fact ;  his  own  mother  used  to 
say  of  him,  "  Oor  Davie's  a  fine  guid-natured  crater,  but 
uncommon  wake  -  minded."  It  is  really  extraordinary 
that,  in  the  midst  of  this  mass  of  simplicity,  good- 
nature, and,  if  I  may  say  so,  blubber,  there  should  have 
been  found  the  subtlest  analytic  intellect  that  was  then, 
probably,  in  existence — almost  as  though  it  were  itself 
the  paradox  that  it  alone  loved.  That  perfect  refinement 
of  written  speech,  too ;  we  might  as  well  expect  Daniel 
Lambert  to  have  the  lightest  foot  in  the  dance  !  How  it 
is  such  refinement,  indeed,  that  he  would  wish  to  have 
before  him  always  !  It  is  a  perfect  joy  for  him  to  say  to 
himself,  Virgil  and  Eacine  and  Mr.  Pope  !  One  is  almost 
tempted  to  think  that  David  Hume  would  have  been 
contented  to  pass  his  life  with  no  more  than  a  schedule 
before  his  eyes  of  all  the  great  classical  names  in  litera- 
ture. He  is  quite  happy  to  see  them,  one  after  the  other, 
named  in  his  pages.  "  Of  all  the  great  poets,"  he  says, 
"  Virgil  and  Eacine,  in  my  opinion,  lie  nearest  the  centre." 
"  'Tis  sufficient  to  run  over  Cowley  once,  but  Parnell,  after 
the  fiftieth  reading,  is  as  fresh  as  at  first."  "  Seneca 
abounds  with  agreeable  faults,  says  Quintilian,  dbundat 
dulcibus  vitiis."  "  Terence  is  a  modest  and  bashful 
beauty."  "  Each  line,  each  word  in  Catullus x  has  its 
merit ;  and  I  am  never  tired  with  the  perusal  of  him." 

1  It  says  something  for  Hume  that  he  could  see  that  perfect  diction  in 
Catullus. 


HUME  ON  SWIFT.  235 

Ah  !  how  such  studies  "  give  a  certain  elegance  of 
sentiment  to  which  the  rest  of  mankind  are  strangers!" 
How  they  "  produce  an  agreeable  melancholy,"  and  how 
"  the  emotions  which  they  excite  are  soft  and  tender ! " 
Ah  !  "  such  a  superiority  do  the  pursuits  of  literature 
possess  above  every  other  occupation,  that  even  he  who 
attains  but  a  mediocrity  in  them,  merits  the  pre-eminence 
above  those  that  excel  the  most  in  the  common  and  vulgar 
professions !"  Then  he  laments  how  far  the  English  are 
still  behind  in  such  politeness  and  elegance !  He  even 
fears  that  they  are  "  relapsing  fast  into  the  deepest 
stupidity  and  ignorance"  (Burton,  ii.  268);  "their 
comic  poets,  to  move  them,  must  have  recourse  to 
obscenity ;  their  tragic  poets  to  blood  and  slaughter." 
"  Elegance  and  propriety  of  style  have  been  neglected  ;  " 
"  the  first  polite  prose  they  have  was  wrote  by  a  man 
who  is  still  alive  (Dr.  Swift)."  And  what  a  very  limited 
improvement  that  was  to  Hume,  we  can  see  from  a  letter 
of  his  to  Robertson  (Burton,  ii.  413).  Eemonstrating  with 
Robertson  in  regard  to  certain  usages  in  style  on  his 
part,  he  says,  "  I  know  your  affection  for  wherewith  pro- 
ceeds from  your  partiality  to  Dean  Swift,  whom  I  can 
often  laugh  with,  whose  style  I  can  even  approve,  but 
surely  can  never  admire. — "Were  not  the  Literature  of 
the  English  still  in  a  somewhat  barbarous  state,  that 
author's  place  would  not  be  so  high  among  their  classics." 
Then,  again,  in  the  same  letter,  "  But  you  tell  me  that 
Swift  does  otherwise.  To  be  sure,  there  is  no  reply  to 
that ;  and  we  must  swallow  your  hath,  too,  upon  the 
same  authority.  I  will  see  you  d — d  sooner."  It  looks 
odd, — it  is  the  custom  of  even  swearing  gentlemen  to 
respect  clergymen, — but  Hume,  for  his  part,  seems  to 
reserve  himself  in  that  way  just  for  his  clerical  friends  ! 
In  a  letter  of  about  the  same  date  to  Blair,  when  praising 
Robertson  for  his  second  historical  work,  the  Charles  V., 


23 G  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

he  says,  playfully  enough  and  good-naturedly  enough,  for 
it  concerns  the  rival  whom  the  public  begin  to  place 
above  himself :  "  I  hope,  for  a  certain  reason,  which  I 
keep  to  myself,  that  he  does  not  intend,  in  his  third 
work,  to  go  beyond  his  second,  though  I  am  damnably 
afraid  he  will ! "  It  is  really  very  odd.  I  have  read  all 
the  letters  in  Burton's  two  volumes,  and  I  positively  do 
not  believe  Hume  ever  to  swear  in  the  whole  of  them, 
except  once  to  each  of  these  two  clergymen  !  Of  course 
on  both  occasions  it  is  what  is  dearest  to  him,  literature, 
that  is  concerned,  and  as  we  forgive  the  Englishman 
who,  in  his  delight,  d — d  the  Swiss  Engadine,  I  suppose, 
for  some  such  reason,  we  may  also  excuse  Hume.  "A 
celebrated  French  author,  M.  Fontenelle,"  says  Hume, 
and  it  is  evidently  a  sweet  morsel  in  his  mouth,  but  why 
it  should  be  so,  it  is  difficult  to  see ;  for  Fontenelle  is  no 
more  than  a  name  now,  even  to  his  countrymen,  who 
have  forgotten  all  he  ever  in  such  quantities  wrote. 
Hume,  however,  actually  quotes  Fontenelle  three  times 
oftener  than  any  other  French  writer ;  while  Moliere  he 
only  once  just  names !  Of  the  Italians,  he  refers  to 
Tasso  and  Ariosto,  but  never  to  Dante.  I  suppose, 
however,  that,  for  him,  a  philosopher  by  profession, 
his  very  greatest  blunder  is  that  about  Aristotle.  "  The 
fame  of  Cicero  flourishes  at  present,"  he  remarks,  "  but 
that  of  Aristotle  is  utterly  decayed."  But  Hume's 
studies,  as  we  saw  formerly,  were  not  at  all  deep  in  his 
own  business — metaphysic.  His  ambition  went  out  of 
that,  it  would  seem,  into  literature  as  literature,  polite 
literature.  With  what  unction  he  allows  himself  to  cry, 
"  At  twenty  Ovid  may  be  the  favourite  author ;  Horace  at 
forty;  and  perhaps  Tacitus  at  fifty!"  But,  at  any  age,  when 
he  says,  "  Virgil  and  Bacine,"  "  Mr.  Pope  and  Lucretius," 
he  puffs  his  breath,  and  actually  rises  two  inches  higher ! 
With  all  that,  undoubtedly,  and  just  with  all  that,  and 


JOKES,  STORIES.  237 

despite  his  stupidity  of  face  and  mere  corpulence  of  body, 
Hume  was,  in  heart  and  soul,  a  man  of  even  rare  sensi- 
bility. It  is  hardly  possible  to  imagine  greater  pain, 
greater  mortification  than  his  was  at  the  failure  of  his 
first  literary  ventures.  He  never  recovered  perfectly 
from  the  prostration  of  his  early  unsuccess.  It  was  in 
vain  for  his  publisher  Millar,  somewhat  later,  to  write 
him  of  the  sale  of  his  books,  of  the  remarks  upon  them, 
of  new  editions,  etc. ;  it  was  impossible  to  console  him 
for  that  first  insult.  Even  at  Paris,  in  17 04,  at  the 
very  moment  when  he  seemed  to  be  worshipped  as  the 
very  greatest  of  living  literary  celebrities,  he  writes  (as 
though  from  a  mind  still  humiliated  and  sore  under  the 
recollection  of  unmerited  rebuff  and  disgust),  "  I  have 
been  accustomed  to  meet  with  nothing  but  insults  and 
indignities  from  my  native  country,  but  if  it  continue  so, 
ingrata  patria,  nc  ossa  quidcm  habebis :  ungrateful  native 
country  mine,  thou  shalt  not  even  have  my  bones !  " 
Some  little  time  before  that,  too,  he  had  said  to  the  same 
correspondent,  "  As  to  the  approbation  or  esteem  of  those 
blockheads  who  call  themselves  the  public,  I  do  most 
heartily  despise  it."  And  yet  Hume,  in  that  great  carcase 
of  his,  like  Falstaff,  perhaps,  was  not  without  humour. 
"  Is  not  this  delicious  revenge?"  he  writes  once  to  a  friend  ; 
"it  brings  to  my  mind  the  story  of  the  Italian,  who, 
reading  that  passage  of  Scripture,  '  Vengeance  is  mine, 
saith  the  Lord,'  burst  forth,  '  Ay,  to  be  sure ;  it  is  too 
sweet  for  any  mortal.'  "  He  was  once  asked,  "  What  has 
put  you  into  this  good  humour,  Hume  ? "  and  answered, 
"  Why,  man,  I  have  just  had  the  best  thing  said  to  me  I 
ever  heard."  Hume  had  been  complaining,  it  seems, 
thai  having  written  so  many  volumes  unreprehended,  it 
was  hard  and  unreasonable  that  he  should  be  abused  and 
torn  to  pieces  for  the  matter  of  a  page  or  two.  "  You  put 
me  in  mind,"  said  one  of  the  company,  "  of  an  acquaintance 


238  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

of  mine,  a  notary  public,  who  having  been  condemned  to 
be  hanged  for  forgery,  lamented  the  hardship  of  his  case  ; 
that  after  having  written  so  many  thousand  inoffensive 
sheets  he  should  be  hanged  for  one  line ! "  Hume 
enjoyed  jokes  even  against  himself,  though  not  always  it 
would  seem.  On  one  occasion,  remarking  on  the  moral 
problem  of  a  certain  respectable  Edinburgh  banker 
eloping  with  a  considerable  sum  of  money,  he  was 
replied  to  by  John  Home,  "  That  he  could  easily  account 
for  it  from  the  nature  of  his  studies  and  the  kind  of 
books  he  read."  "  What  were  they  ? "  said  Hume. 
"  Boston's  Fourfold  State,"  rejoined  Home,  "  and  Hume's 
Essays."  It  is  said  David,  for  a  little,  did  not  quite 
see  the  joke. 

Kant,  as  we  know,  tells  some  wonderful  stories  that 
seem  no  better  than  jokes,  as  that  certain  mineral  waters, 
already  hot,  come  much  slower  a-boil  than  ordinary 
water,  etc.  etc. ;  and  we  are  tempted  to  fancy  that  here, 
too,  as  usual,  Kant  has  been  under  the  influence  of  Hume, 
who  records  it  as  a  fact  that,  "  Hot  mineral  waters  come 
not  a-boiling  sooner  than  cold  water,"  as  also  that  "  Hot 
iron  put  into  cold  water  soon  cools,  but  becomes  hot 
again."  Kant,  however,  could  not  have  seen  these  notes, 
which  are  from  a  memorandum  book  of  Hume's,  first 
published  by  Burton,  I  suppose,  in  1846.  If  the  6av- 
fidaia  aKovafiara  are  really  Aristotle's,  one  might  think 
that  both  moderns  were  vying  with  their  ancient  master, 
who  has  whole  scores  of  such  wonders  as  that,  "  In  the 
Tigris  there  is  found  a  stone  such  that  whoever  has  it 
will  never  be  harmed  by  wild  beasts ; "  or  that,  "  In  the 
Ascanian  lake  the  water  itself  cleans  clothes ; "  or  that 
"  there  is  a  stone  like  a  bean  in  the  Nile,  which  if  dogs 
see,  they  do  not  bark."  But  it  is  not  certain  that  the 
studies  of  either  Kant  or  Hume  had  gone  so  deep  in 
Aristotle !     It  is  to  the  advantage  of  Aristotle,  too,  that, 


THE  SCOTCH THE  EPIGONIAD.  239 

in  his  case,  the  stories  are,  in  all  probability,  spurious ; 
while  for  Kant  and  Hume,  they  are  beyond  a  doubt. 
Physical  science  is  apt  to  be  "  enlightened"  now-a-days,  and 
to  revere  Hume  as  a  priest  of  "  enlightenment ; "  but,  it 
would  seem,  Hume  himself  does  not  like  physical  science ; 
he  has  this  memorandum  here:  "A  proof  that  natural 
philosophy  has  no  truth  in  it  is,  that  it  has  only  suc- 
ceeded in  things  remote,  as  the  heavenly  bodies ;  or 
minute,  as  light !  " 

It  is  supposed  that  Kant  was  rather  proud  of  his 
Scottish  origin;  but  it  will  be  difficult  to  match  the 
satisfaction  of  Hume  at  times  in  the  literary,  and,  conse- 
quently to  him,  general  superiority  of  his  countrymen. 
He  opines  that  we,  the  Scotch,  are  "really  the  people 
most  distinguished  for  literature  in  Europe  !  "  (Hear  t  hat, 
Mr.  Buckle !)  He  asks  with  indignation  on  one  occasion 
later,  Do  not  the  English  "treat  with  hatred  our  just 
pretensions  to  surpass  and  govern  them  "  ?  And  it  is  in 
consequence  of  the  same  conceptions  that  nothing  can 
exceed  his  exultation,  or  his  assurance,  that,  in  the 
Epicjoniad  of  "Wilkie,  the  Scotch  have  produced  one  of 
the  world's  great  epics.  It  was  in  the  heroic  ten- 
syllabled  tink-a-tink,  and  it  read  like  Tope's  Homer.  So 
it  was  that  it  took  David.  He  just  raved  about  it,  and 
he  actually  got  seven  hundred  and  fifty  copies  sold  of  it ; 
but,  with  all  that  he  raved  about  it,  and  all  he  did  for  it, 
it  died.  I  suppose  nobody  alive  now  has  ever  seen  it ; 
but  no  doubt  it  was  as  foolish  a  sham  as  ever  impotence 
produced,  or  honesty  believed  in.  It  never  served  any 
purpose  in  existence,  but  to  show,  in  the  case  of  Hume, 
on  what  mere  rot-stone  a  literary  taste  might  lie  founded. 
The  extravaganl  language  of  Hume  here,  if  humiliating  for 
him,  is  specially  instructive  for  us.  The  Epigoniad  is  for 
]  )avid  "  the  second  epic  poem  in  our  language  :  "  "it  is  cer- 
tainly a  most  singular  production,  full  of  sublimity  and 


240  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

genius,  adorned  by  a  noble,  harmonious,  forcible,  and  even 
correct  versification  :  "  its  author,  "  relying  on  his  sublime 
imagination,  and  his  nervous  and  harmonious  expression, 
has  ventured  to  present  to  his  reader  the  naked  beauties 
of  nature  ! "  And  so  one  sees  that  it  was  not  in  David's 
eyes  that  the  Epigoniad  was  a  mere  teased-up,  tricked- 
out  counterfeit  to  be  taken  to  pieces  in  a  day :  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  get  beyond  what  for  him  had  "  even 
correct  versification  " — a  harmony  quite  possibly,  so  far 
as  he  could  judge,  like  that  of  Mr.  Pope !  The  letters  of 
Hume,  in  which  these  things  appear,  are  always,  never- 
theless, very  interesting,  and  not  without  hits  at  times  of 
rare  sagacity,  as  when  he  asks  Gibbon,  why  he  composes 
in  French,  and  tells  him  that  "  America  promises  a  superior 
stability  and  duration  to  the  English  language  ;  "  or  when, 
from  his  own  observations,  he  expresses  it  as  his  opinion 
of  Germany  that,  "  were  it  united,  it  would  be  the  greatest 
power  that  ever  was  in  the  world."  One  learns,  too,  from 
these  letters,  and,  generally,  from  Burton's  Life  of  him, 
many  earnest  things  of  Hume.  He  was  a  warm  and 
active  friend,  without  a  vestige  of  a  grudge  in  him.  How 
generous  he  was  to  Eobertson,  urging  him  to  write,  ne- 
gociating  for  him  with  publishers,  pushing  his  books,  and 
praising  them  to  everybody !  And  as  he  was  to  Eobertson,  so 
was  he  to  every  other  possible  rival — to  Ferguson,  to  Henry, 
to  Gibbon.  To  Adam  Smith  he  had  been  so  kind,  and 
good,  and  helpful,  that  Smith,  like  the  affectionate,  simple 
creature  he  was,  veritably  worshipped  Hume.  Hume's 
friends  indeed  were  a  host,  and  not  one  of  them  but 
loved  him.  He  had  old  mutton  and  old  claret  for  them, 
and  was  very  hospitable  to  them.  He  was  a  most 
zealous  and  affectionate  uncle  and  brother;  and  did  his 
best,  simply  for  everybody,  related  or  unrelated.  One 
might,  perhaps,  except  a  little  in  the  case  of  Smollett, 
whom,  as    a  be-puffed  rival,   he    had   evidently  viewed 


SMOLLETT BUUKE.  241 

with  impatience,  and  spoken  somewhat  disparagingly  of 
in  the  character  of  a  historian.  That  was  not  quite  just. 
Smollett  wrote  his  History  for  bread;  but  he  wrote  il 
well;  with  admirable  style  in  the  main,  and  he  broke 
his  constitution  in  its  service.  It  was  when  so  worn 
and  exhausted  that  Smollett  made  an  application  to 
Hume,  who  was  at  that  time  a  Secretary  of  State. 
Hume's  answer,  that  he  had  spoken  for  him,  but  could 
give  him  no  hope  of  a  consulship,  is  cool  business,  and 
no  more.  A  year  later,  Smollett,  on  the  eve  of  starting, 
as  he  says,  for  his  "  perpetual  exile,"  writes  again  to 
Hume,  not  for  himself  this  time,  however,  but  for  a  cer- 
tain neglected,  though  deserving,  Captain  Robert  Stobo. 
Hume,  on  this  occasion,  writes  warmly  in  return  ;  but 
what  contributes,  perhaps,  to  move  him  now  is  the 
opinion,  expressed  by  Smollett,  that  he  (Hume)  is  "  un- 
doubtedly the  best  writer  of  the  age."  David  cannot 
resist  that  compliment;  it  goes  to  his  heart;  and  he 
"  accepts  "  that  "  great  partiality  "  of  "  good  opinion  "  on 
the  part  of  Smollett,  "as  a  pledge  of  his  goodwill  and 
friendship!"  Edmund  Burke  is  said  to  have  affirmed  of 
Hume,  that  "  in  manners  he  was  an  easy  unaffected  man 
previous  to  going  to  Paris  ;  but  that  he  returned  a  literary 
coxcomb."  There  does  not  appear  to  have  been  really 
any  such  change  in  Hume,  so  far  as  we  are  to  accept  the 
testimony  of  his  friends  at  home.  It  would  have  been 
very  strange,  at  the  same  time,  if  all  his  varied  circum- 
stances of  life  had  left  behind  them  no  traces  on  his 
character.  Such  flatteries  as  that  of  Gibbon,  who  offers 
to  burn  a  work  if  Hume  says  so,  though  he  would  "  make 
so  unlimited  a  sacrifice  to  no  man  in  Europe  bm  to  Mr. 
Hume,"  or  that  of  Smollett,  which  we  have  just  seen, 
must  have  been  not  rare  in  the  end;  and  they  were  pre- 
cisely the  incense  that  would  intoxicate  a  Hume,  if,  in 
such  a  subject,  intoxication  were   possible   at   all.      But, 

Q 


242  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWELFTH. 

really,  after  everything,  his  experiences  at  the  hands  of 
the  public  and  at  those  even  of  his  friends,  his  experi- 
ences at  Paris,  his  experiences  as  a  Minister  of  State,  he 
could  not  have  been  any  longer  the  mere  floundering 
youngling  in  the  dark ;  but  must,  in  thought,  speech,  and 
action,  have  borne  himself  with  the  crest  and  confidence 
of  a  grown  man  that  knew  his  own  support  in  the  train- 
Lags  and  trials  within  him.  Hume  was  too  genuine  a 
man  to  be  carried,  so  to  speak,  out  of  himself — to  fall 
away  into  the  insolence  and  conceit  of  the  shallow.  It 
might  have  been  of  him  tht't  Dr.  Young  said:  "Himself 
too  much  he  prizes  to  be  proud."  I  think  we  shall  see 
reason,  too,  when  we  specially  come  to  that,  not  to  be  so 
very  hard  and  harsh  on  Hume  in  the  matter  of  religion. 
He  hated  superstition ;  but  no  thought  lay  nearer  his 
heart  all  his  life  than  the  thought  of  God.  He  medi- 
tated nothing  more  deeply,  more  reverently,  more 
anxiously,  than  the  secret  source  of  this  great  uni- 
verse. "Walking  home  with  his  friend  Ferguson,  one 
clear  and  beautiful  night,  "  Oh,  Adam  ! "  he  cried,  look- 
ing up,  "  can  any  one  contemplate  the  wonders  of  that 
firmament,  and  not  believe  that  there  is  a  God  ? "  On 
the  death  of  his  mother,  too,  whom  he  loved  always  with 
the  most  constant  affection  and  the  sincerest  veneration, 
a  friend  found  him  "  in  the  deepest  affliction  and  in  a 
flood  of  grief : "  to  this  friend,  then  taking  occasion  to 
suggest  certain  improving  religious  reflections,  David 
answered  through  his  tears,  "  Though  I  throw  out  my 
speculations  to  entertain  the  learned  and  metaphysical, 
yet,  in  other  things,  I  do  not  think  so  differently  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  as  you  imagine." 

"We  are  now  prepared  to  advance  to  our  conclusion  in 
these  matters,  as  I  shall  hope  to  accomplish  in  our  next 
lecture. 


GIFFORD  LECTUEE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

The  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion  —Long  consideration  and 
repealed  revision  of  them — Their  publication,  Hume's  anxiety 
for,  Ins  friends'  difficulties  with — Style,  Cicero — Words  and 
things,  Quintilian — Styles,  old  and  new — The  earlier  works — 
The  Treatis*  —Tin:  Enquiry,  Rosenkranz — Hume's  provision — 
Locke,  Berkeley — Ideas — Connection  in  them — Applied  to  the 
question  of  a  Deity — of  a  Particular  Providena — Extension  of 
the  cause  inferred  to  be  proportioned  only  to  that  of  the  given 
effect— Applied  to  the  cause  of  the  world— Natural  theology  to 
Hume — Chrysippus  in  Plutarch — Greek— The  order  of  argu- 
mentation— The  ontological— Matter  the  necessary  existence — 
Thecosmological  answers  that-  Infinite  contingencies  insufficient 
for  one  necessity — The  teleological  —  Analogy  inapplicable — 
Hume's  own  example. 

In  passing  now  to  those  works  of  Hnrne  which  more 
especially  regard  our  precise  subject,  we  are  naturally 
led,  in  so  far  as  literary  considerations  still  influence  us, 
to  the  Dialogues  concerning  Natural  Religion.  At  the 
time  of  his  death,  these  Dialogues,  it  seems,  had  been 
under  their  author's  hands  for  no  less  than  twenty-seven 
years — exactly  the  judicial  nine  years  three  times  over  ! 
— twenty-seven  years,  during  which  they  had  been  the 
subjects  of  innumerable  revisions,  corrections,  alterations, 
emendations,  and  modifications  of  all  kinds.  I  daresay 
we  do  not  doubt  now  that  what  was  principally  con- 
cerned in  these  was  the  matter  of  style.  "  Stylus  est 
optimus  magister  eloquenti  yle  is  the  supreme  master 
of  eloquence,"  a  quotation  of  his  own  from  Quintilian, 
seems  to  have  been  ever  present  to  Hume's  mind  as  his 
constant  guide  in  writing.     So  it   is   we   tind  that   these 


244  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

twenty-seven  years  have  eventuated  in  effecting  for  the 
Dialogues  in  question  a  perfect  finish  and  a  polish  ulti- 
mate. Doubtless,  it  is  in  his  belief  of  this  that  their 
author  manifests  so  much  anxiety  in  regard  to  their 
posthumous  publication.  In  his  will,  he  leaves  his 
manuscripts  to  the  care  of  Adam  Smith,  with  powder  to 
judge  in  respect  of  the  whole  of  them,  the  Dialogues  con- 
cerning Natural  Eeligion  alone  excepted  :  these  Dialogues 
are  to  be  published  absolutely.  It  would  appear  now 
that,  in  Hume's  circle,  these  dispositions  of  his  will 
leaked  out  somehow  and  became  known  ;  for  already 
before  his  death  there  is  question  of  these  Dialogues 
between  Hume  and  his  friends.  His  biographer,  Burton 
(ii.  491),  says,  "Elliot  was  opposed  to  the  publication 
of  this  work  ;  Blair  pleaded  strongly  for  its  suppression  ; 
and  Smith,  who  had  made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  not 
edit  the  work,  seems  to  have  desired  that  the  testamentary 
injunction  laid  on  him  might  be  revoked."  Hume  was 
not  to  be  baulked.  He  becomes  sensitive  on  this  subject 
of  his  Dialogues :  "  If  I  live  a  few  years  longer,  I  shall 
publish  them  myself,"  he  says  ;  and,  after  various  re- 
jected propositions,  losing  patience  even  with  Smith,  he, 
by  a  codicil  to  his  will,  retracts  his  previous  destinations, 
and  leaves  his  "  manuscripts  to  the  care  of  Mr.  William 
Strahan  of  London,"  with  the  express  condition  that  the 
Dialogues  on  Eeligion  shall  be  "  printed  and  published  any 
time  within  two  years  after  his  death."  But  the  anxieties 
of  Hume,  even  after  signature  of  this  codicil,  were  not 
yet  at  an  end.  He  is  found  to  have  returned  to  it,  and 
to  have  tacked  on  to  it  a  paragraph — to  the  effect  that, 
if  his  Dialogues  were  not  published  within  two  years  and 
a  half  after  his  death,  he  "  ordained "  the  property  to 
return  to  his  "  nephew  David,  whose  duty  in  publishing 
them,  as  the  last  request  of  his  uncle,  must  be  approved 
of  by  all  the  world."     And  this  David  it  was  who  did, 


STYLE CICERO.  245 

in  the  end,  publish  the  work  ;  for  Strahan,  too,  had  found 
it  prudent  to  flinch.  After  so  much  gingerliness  on  the 
part  of  so  many  of  the  dearest  friends  of  Hume,  one 
expects  to  find  something  very  dreadful  in  the  book.  So 
far,  however,  as  I  may  judge,  Hume,  to  use  the  phrase, 
had  written  much  more  dreadfully  on  the  same  subject 
before.  The  essay  Of  a  Particular  Providence  in  the 
Enquiry,  for  example,  certainly  seems  to  me  to  have  left 
the  Dialogues,  relatively,  nothing  of  any  importance  to 
add. 

"What  strikes  us  at  once  in  these  is,  as  I  have  said, 
the  style.  One  would  think  that  Hume,  in  his  admira- 
tion of  Cicero,  whether  in  point  of  matter  or  in  point  of 
form,  had  taken  Cicero's  various  dialogues,  mostly  written 
in  his  own  academic  spirit,  into  serious  study  and  emula- 
tion ;  and  had  pleased  himself  with  the  idea  that,  as  he 
resorted  to  the  Latin  of  Cicero,  so,  in  a  far  distant  future, 
with  deaths  of  nations,  perhaps,  men  would  resort  to  his 
English — for  a  like  enlightenment  of  opinion,  and  even 
purity  of  prose !  For,  indeed,  it  is  Cicero  that  is  the 
model  to  these  writings  of  Hume,  and  not  Plato ;  though 
the  simplicity  of  the  latter  may  seem  to  have  no  less 
place  in  them  than  the  ineffaceable  labour  of  the  former. 
It  is  really  as  Cicero  has  his  Cotta  and  his  Velleius,  his 
Yarro  and  his  Atticus,  and  not  as  Plato  has  his  Socrates, 
and  his  Hippias,  and  the  rest,  that  Hume  has  his  young 
man  Pamphilus,  writing  didactically  to  his  young  friend 
Hermippus  of  what  Philo,  and  Demea,  and  his  guardian, 
Cleanthes,  said  to  each  other  in  the  library  of  the  last. 
"  My  youth  rendered  me  a  mere  auditor  of  their  dis- 
putes," says  Pamphilus ;  "and  that  curiosity,  natural  to 
the  early  season  of  life,  has  so  deeply  imprinted  in  my 
memory  the  whole  chain  and  connection  of  their  argu- 
ments, that,  I  hope,  I  shall  not  omit  or  confound  any 
considerable  part  of  them  in  the  recital."     That  sentence, 


246  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

in  a  way,  is  a  specimen  of  the  whole ;  every  word  in  it 
has  been  anxiously  chosen;  and  every  clause  has  received 
its  place  from  a  sufficient  trial  of  the  ear.     The  actual 
dialogue  proceeds  altogether  as  the  circumstances  suggest : 
we  are  in  the  society  of  the  refined,  of  the  polite,  who  are 
perfect  in  their  consideration  each  of  the  other,  and  whose 
lips  drop  pearls.     All  here,  indeed,  is  so  very  fine  that 
every  the  least  particular  of  it  seems  to  have  been  cut  by 
hand, — to    have   been    pared,   polished,    trimmed, — nay, 
actually,  to  have  been  smoothed  and  finished  off  with 
morsels  of  window-glass  and  relays  of  sand-paper.      But 
it  remains  a  question  whether  Hume  has  not  precisely 
made  a  mistake  in  what  was  so  very  dear  to  him.      Even 
Lord  Brougham,  who  was  the  last  man,  I  suppose,  that 
wrote   such   things,   dropped   the    Hermippus's   and   the 
Pamphilus's,  and  took  to  the  Althorps,  the  Greys,  and  others 
the  like  around  him.      It  is  to  be  feared  that  Hume  here, 
and  elsewhere  indeed,  has,  in  despite  of  his  well-thumbed 
Quintilian,  sinned  precisely  in  the  way  which  Quintilian 
reprobates — maintaining    this,   namely,    that,    insist    on 
words  as  you  may,  you  must  not,  in  the  first  place,  for 
all  that,  neglect  things,  which  are  as  the  nerves  in  causes, 
verbal  eloquence  being  a  very  good  thing,  certainly,  in  the 
second  place,  "  but  only  when  it  comes  naturally,  and  is 
not  affected"   (Quintil.  viii.,  Introd.  18).       It  is  to  be 
feared,  I  say,  that  Hume  has  not  been  sufficiently  on  his 
guard  in  this  respect ;  for  all  here  is  all  too  fine ;  all  here 
is  truly  so  very   fine  that  it  largely  fails   to   impress. 
They   will   always,   no   doubt,   maintain   their   historical 
place  and  importance;  but   I  know   not  that  there  are 
many,   in   these   days,   who   make   much   case   of    these 
Dialogues.     The  Ciceronian  set  of  them — the  turns,  "  Said 
Cleanthes  with  a  smile,"   or  "  Here  Philo  was  a  little 
embarrassed,  but  Demea  broke  in  upon   the   discourse, 
and  saved  his  countenance," — I  know  not  that  any  one, 


THE  TBEATISE.  2  I  « 

since  Lord  Brougham,  has  cared  for  that  kind  of  thing. 
The  names  Cleanthes,  I  hilo,  Demea,  etc.,  are  no  longer  to 
our  taste.  Now-a-days,  it  is,  on  the  whole,  the  material 
contribution,  what  Quintilian  means  as  the  "  things,"  the 
"  nerves,"  and  not  the  mere  verbal  form,  that  is  the  main 
desideratum.  For  that  part,  indeed,  after  the  more 
pointed,  forceful,  pictorial,  less  intentional  and  laboured 
style,  to  which  we  have  been  accustomed  by  our  later 
writers  of  all  kinds,  novelists,  historians,  critics, publicists, 
the  older,  so  very  smoothly  flowing,  well-balanced  style 
rather  affects  us  as  opaque.  We  lose  ourselves,  as  it 
were,  in  the  murmur  of  it.  In  Hume,  too,  the  well-bred 
rhilister,  in  his  super-refinement  of  craze,  is  too  con- 
stantly betrayed  to  us.  "The  book,"  he  tells  us  with 
such  a  proper  air,  "  carries  us,  in  a  manner,  into  com- 
pany, and  unites  the  two  greatest  and  purest  pleasures  of 
human  life,  study  and  society  ! "  One  could  hope,  for 
Hume's  sake,  that  all  would  turn  nut  to  his  wish  to  leave 
something  classical  behind  him  that,  as  such,  would  be 
cherished  1  >y  posterity,  and  ever  by  the  young  as  standard 
consulted.  But  it  is  time  to  refer  to  the  "nerves,"  tin' 
matter  of  the  book.  Profitably  to  do  this,  however,  it 
appears  to  me  necessary  that  we  should  first  know  some- 
thing of  this  matter  in  the  form  it  took  in  its  author- 
earlier  works. 

The  Treatise  of  Hitman  Nature  is  a  work  in  three 
volumes,  of  which  the  first  and  second,  when  first 
published  in  1739,  fell,  its  author  avows,  "dead-born 
from  the  press."  Hume,  however,  pocketed  fifty  guineas 
for  these  two  volumes  ;  and  it  is  pretty  certain  he  would 
not  have  pocketed  fifty  shillings  for  them  had  his 
publisher  then  been  as  most  publishers  now.  As  tor  the 
third  volume,  we  learn  that  it  was  published,  a  year  later, 
by  another  publisher;  and  that  is  all!  At  present,  I  do 
not    think   it    is   ever   read.      There    are    some   readable 


248  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

passages  in  it  on  political  subjects ;  but  as  for  the  general 
text  on  morals,  one  reads  and  reads — at  least  I  read  and 
read,  and  wonder  what  it  is  all  about — wonder  is  there 
any  meaning  in  that  cheerful,  endless,  prolixity  that  will 
not  enter  one's  mind,  and  give  itself  a  place  there ! 
Indeed,  if  others  are  as  I  am,  then  I  fear  the  second 
volume  may  not  generally  interest  more  than  the  third. 
But  with  the  first  volume  it  is  altogether  otherwise. 
That  volume,  with  its  Book  on  the  Understanding,  is  full 
of  interest,  and  will  always  command  the  attention  of  the 
philosophical  student.  Here  Hume  is  really  in  earnest, 
and  always  saying  something,  unless,  perhaps,  in  the 
mathematical  part,  where,  indeed,  his  ideas — crude,  callow, 
wild  —  fall,  on  the  whole,  hopelessly  wide.  Hume's 
style  is  always  excellent  where  he  has,  as  generally  in 
this  Book,  business  before  him.  Where  that  is  the  case 
—  business,  reality  —  Hume  discards  all  unnecessary 
ambages ;  the  softness,  looseness  of  uncertainty  dis- 
appears, and,  in  its  place,  we  have  the  force  and  the 
stroke  and  the  feeling  of  decision.  No  publicist  now 
could  write  a  better  style  than  the  young  Hume  then. 
Every  word  is  clear,  flexible  in  shape  to  the  meaning 
and  the  mood.  I  am  not  sure  but  that  it  is  a  better 
style  than  when  in  his  Essays,  a  year  or  two  later,  he 
adds  to  these  qualities — by  express  effort  adds  to  these 
qualities,  what  is  to  him  elegance ;  and  I  am  quite  sure 
that  when,  some  six  years  later  still,  judging  that  his 
unsuccess  in  the  Treatise  had,  as  he  says,  "proceeded 
more  from  the  manner  than  the  matter,"  he  "  cast  the 
first  part  of  that  work  anew,"  and  published  it  as  the 
Enquiry — I  am  quite  sure  that  then,  in  contradiction 
of  himself,  it  was  not  the  manner  but  the  matter  he 
improved.  The  new  manner,  in  fact,  strikes  as  something 
t/z'simproved  ;  as  something  that  has  been  artificially  taken 
in  hand,  and  only  unsuccessfully  re-made  ;  as  something 


bume's  btock-in-teadb.  249 

externally  introduced,  and  that  seems  affected.  It  is 
certainly  that  that  has  been  in  the  mind  of  Rosenkranz 
when  he  had  to  apply  the  term  "  redselige"  to 
these  essays — dub  them,  that  is,  "  talkative,"  or,  as  we 
might  say,  verbose.  In  matter,  however,  tin-  later  work 
really  is  an  improvement  on  the  earlier,  which,  with  its 
ability  of  any  kind,  always  suggested  the  idea  young  ! 
At  the  same  time  it  is  to  be  said,  mainly  of  Hume's 
specially  metaphysical  efforts,  and  in  his  own  words  to 
Francis  Hutcheson  at  the  very  time  he  published  the 
Treatise,  that  his  "  reasonings  will  be  more  useful  by 
furnishing  hints  and  exciting  people's  curiosity,  than  as 
containing  any  principles  that  will  augment  the  stock  of 
knowledge."  How  accurately  Hume  judged  of  himself 
then,  we  are  only  getting  more  and  more  clearly  to  under- 
stand now,  after  a  hundred  and  fifty  years!  Hume  was 
original  on  a  very  small  provision — from  without,  namely. 
In  effect,  it  appears  to  have  been  the  fashion  then  to  read 
beforehand  little  more  than  contemporaries.  It  would  go 
hard  to  tell  what  John  Locke  had  read  before  he  wrote 
his  Essay.  With  all  his  Greek  in  the  end,  too,  Berkeley 
seems  only  to  have  read  Locke  at  first.  Now,  these  two 
writers  are  really  library  enough  for  all  Hume's  meta- 
physics. Sather  we  may  say  that,  in  that  reference,  it 
was  with  what  he  took  from  Berkeley  that  Hume  started 
as  his  whole  stock-in-trade.  Not  but  that,  again  and 
again,  we  may  read  Locke  as  Hume,  and  Hume  as  Locke. 
Berkeley  conceived  all  to  consist  of  two  sorts  of  spirits, 
with  what  he  called  ideas  between  them.  To  finite 
spirits  an  infinite  spirit  gave  ideas;  and  these  were  the 
universe.  The  ideas  between  the  two  spirits  constituted 
the  universe.  Hume,  now,  was  completely  taken  by  this 
thought;  he  was  absorbed  into  it.  And  he  issued  from 
this  absorption  with  his  own  rearrangements.  It 
appeared  to  him,  in  the  end,  that  the  ideas  were  the  only 


250  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

facts ;  that  so  they  were  evidence  for  themselves,  but  for 
nothing  further.  The  spirit  that  gave,  the  spirit  that 
received:  the  one  as  well  as  the  other  was  a  gratuitous 
hypothesis.  The  sole  evidence  that  could  be  alleged  for 
cither  was  the  ideas  themselves.  But  that  the  ideas 
were,  and  were  together,  was  no  reason  for  assuming 
quite  another  and  peculiar  entity  in  which  they  were ; 
and  if  we  were  to  start  with  a  presupposition,  we  might 
as  well  start  with  the  ideas  at  first  hand  as  with  only  a 
presupposed  presupposition  at  second  hand.  No  doubt, 
said  Hume,  to  that  presupposed  presupposition,  to  the 
infinite  Spirit,  to  God,  it  was  what  was  called  reasoned, 
from  the  ideas,  and,  specially,  from  the  connection  of  the 
ideas.  But  had  they,  then,  this  connection,  these  ideas  ? 
This  was  the  question  Hume  here  put  to  himself ;  and 
into  that  question,  pretty  well,  his  whole  metaphysic 
summed  itself.  It  is  not  necessary  that  we  should  enter 
at  full  into  the  resultant  theory  of  cause  and  effect. 
One  can  see  at  once,  from  the  materials  as  put,  how  it 
would  all  go.  There  were  the  ideas  ;  and  they  were  said 
to  be  connected  ;  but  what  did  that  mean  ?  They  cer- 
tainly came  in  conjunctions  ;  but  if  we  examined  them  the 
one  with  the  other  individually,  even  as  in  conjunction,  not 
one  of  them  showed  a  reason,  a  tie,  that  bound  it  to  the 
other.  They  were  associated  ;  no  doubt  that  was  the  fact ; 
but  we  knew  no  more  than  that.  We  found  the  associa- 
tions to  be  such  and  such  ;  and  just  so  we  expected 
them  as  such  and  such.  Even  by  the  habit  of  the 
association,  the  one  member  of  it  suggested  the  other ; 
and  that  alone  was  the  connection,  that  alone  was  the 
reason,  the  sole  tie  that  bound  them  together.  There 
was  no  ground  for  the  necessity,  under  the  name  of  power 
even,  which  we  feigned  or  believed  to  exist  in  the  associa- 
tion, but,  as  now  fully  explained,  habit,  custom.  There 
were  certainly   two   kinds   of   ideas.      There  were   ideas 


IDEAS CONNECTION  IN  THEM.  251 

mediate,  and  there  were  ideas  immediate;  the  latter  in 
two  distinctions,  the  former  only  in  one.  The  doable 
distinction  was  named  of  externality  and  internality. 
Internal  immediate  ideas  were  all  our  feelings  within  as 
at  first  hand,  or  directly  experienced;  while  external 
immediate  ideas  were  what  come  before  as,  as  the  world 
of  objects  perceived,  of  things  seen.  Both  class*  I 
immediate  ideas,  whether  within  or  without,  were  natur- 
ally to  be  named  impressions ;  while  the  single  class  of 
mediate  ideas  were,  just  as  commonly  regarded,  ideas — 
ideas  proper.  They  were  but  reflections  or  copies  of  the 
impressions.  Whal  is,  then,  as  it  all  lies  there  now 
before  the  eye  of  Hume,  may  be  pictured  as  an  infinitely 
minute  but  sole-existent  prism,  the  light  on  one  side  of 
which  shall  represent  the  impressions,  as  the  resultant 
colours  on  the  other  shall  be  surrogates  of  the  ideas. 
Ideas  and  impressions  are  but  the  same  thing  twice.  With 
Locke  and  Berkeley,  therefore,  they  may  be  all  called 
ideas;  and  there  seems  no  reason  for  making  a  separate 
entity  of  the  spot,  the  personality,  the  mere  locus,  in 
which  they  meet.  That  they  meet  is  the  sole  fact;  nor 
has  the  meeting-point  any  substantiality  further.  Ideas, 
and  ideas  alone,  constitute  the  universe.  This  is  what 
Hume  has  made  of  the  stock  of  thought  he  received  from 
Berkeley,  and  he  is  wholly  dominated  by  it ;  he  im- 
plicitly believes  in  it;  it  constitutes  truth  for  him — 
philosophical  truth,  that  is;  for  Hume  makes  the  dis- 
tinction between  natural  and  philosophical,  instinct  and 
reason.  As  David  Hume,  his  mother's  son,  he  is  quite  as 
you  or  I;  sees  all  things  around  him  just  as  we  <\"  ; 
and  has  no  doubt  whatever  but  that  there  is  that  in  the 
cause — an  agency,  an  efficacy,  a  power — which  by  very 
nature  necessitates  the  effect;  but,  as  a  philosopher,  he 
challenges  you  and  me  and  all  mankind  //an  intellectual 
reason — an  insight,  an  understanding,  not  a  mere  instinct, 


252  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

nut  a  mere  blind,  unintelligible,  mechanical  force — if  an 
intellectual  reason  can  be  given  for  the  necessity  of  the 
cllW't  i-nsuiiHj  on  the  cause,  he  challenges  you  and  me 
and  all  mankind  to  produce  it — "  show,"  he  says,  "  one 
instance  of  a  cause  where  we  discover  the  power  or 
operating  principle." 

We  have  probably  as  much  of  Hume's  reasonings 
before  us  now  as  is  necessary,  and  may  proceed  to  apply 
it  to  the  question  of  a  God.  In  this  he  takes  full  advan- 
tage of  our  demonstrated  inability,  as  he  thinks,  to  give 
a  philosophical  reason  for  the  admitted  necessity  of  cause 
and  effect.  He  thinks  he  has  proved  to  a  certainty  that, 
as  he  says,  "  the  supposition  of  an  efficacy  in  any  of  the 
known  qualities  of  matter  is  entirely  without  foundation  ;  " 
that  "  all  objects  which  are  found  to  be  constantly  conjoined 
are  upon  that  account  only  to  be  regarded  as  causes  and 
effects ; "  that  "  as  all  objects  which  are  not  contrary 
are  susceptible  of  a  constant  conjunction,  and  as  no  real 
objects  are  contrary,  it  follows  that,  for  aught  we  can 
determine  by  the  mere  ideas,  anything  may  be  the  cause 
or  effect  of  anything ; "  "  creation,  annihilation,  motion, 
reason,  volition — all  these  may  arise  from  one  another, 
or  from  any  other  object  we  can  imagine ; "  that  "  the 
necessity  of  the  cause  to  its  effect  is  but  the  determina- 
tion of  the  mind  by  custom ; "  that  this  necessity,  there- 
fore, is  something  that  exists  in  the  mind,  and  not  in  the 
objects  ; "  that  "  the  connection  between  cause  and  effect, 
the  tie  or  energy  by  which  the  cause  operates  its  effect, 
lies  merely  in  ourselves,  and  is  nothing  but  the  determina- 
tion of  the  mind  from  one  object  to  another  object 
acquired  by  custom."  Hume,  now,  in  the  light  of 
these  conclusions,  has  as  little  difficulty  in  emptying 
God  of  all  efficacy  as  any  the  most  common  and 
everyday  agent,  fire  and  water,  or  earth  and  air ;  for,  as 
he  says,    "  anything  may   be   cause    or    effect    of    any- 


THE  CAUSE  ONLY  PROPORTIONAL  TO  THE  EFFECT.     253 

thing ! "  "  Thought  is  in  no  case  any  more  active 
(operative)  than  matter;"  "we  have  no  idea  of  a  Being 
endowed  with  any  power,  much  less  of  one  endowed  with 
infinite  power;"  sit  far  as  "our  idea  of  that  supreme 
Being  is  derived  from  particular  impressions,  none  of 
which  contain  any  efficacy,  there  is  no  Mich  thing  in  the 
universe  as  a  cause  or  productive  principle,  not  even  the 
Deity  Himself."  If  anyone  will  take  the  trouble  to  read 
parts  three  and  four  of  the  first  book  of  the  Treatise,  he 
will  find  such  phrases  as  these  that  1  have  quoted  without 
difficulty  almost  upon  every  page.  In  these  respects  the 
Enquiry,  if  more  measured  and  somewhat  less  direct,  is 
on  the  whole  fuller  and  quite  as  explicit  ;  and  our  reference 
in  it,  apart  from  the  express  consideration  of  causality,  is 
the  section  Of  a  Particular  Providence.  There  he  puts 
the  argument,  which  he  engages  to  refute,  thus:  "  From 
the  order  of  the  work  you  infer  that  there  must  have 
been  project  and  forethought  in  the  workman;"  "the 
argument  for  a  divine  existence  is  derived  from  the  order 
of  nature,  the  marks  of  intelligence  and  design  in  it  :  '" 
"this  is  an  argument  drawn  from  effects  to  causes." 
Now,  that  being  so,  says  Hume,  "we  must  proportion 
the  one  to  the  other;  we  can  never  he  allowed  bo  ascribe 
to  the  cause  any  cpialities  but  what  are  exactly  sufficient 
to  produce  the  effect."  And  that  is  the  single  fulcrum 
on  which  the  entire  course  of  the  subsequent  argumenta- 
tion rests.  That  argumentation  we  must  see;  but  may 
we  not  say  at  once  that,  on  Hume's  own  premises,  any 
such  argumentation  must  find  itself  in  the  air,  for  he 
himself  has  already  withdrawn  beforehand  it-  single 
basis  of  support  ?  The  one  absolute  fulcrum  is  to  lie  an 
equality  of  qualities  in  the  two  terms  of  the  relation  ; 
the  qualities  in  tin-  cause  must  be  proportional  to  the 
qualities  in  the  effeel  ;  we  must  ascribe  to  the  cause  only 
such  qualities  as  are  sufficient  to  account  for  the  qualities 


254  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

in  the  effect.  I  daresay  we  are  all  directly  not  a 
little  surprised  at  this.  Qualities!  qualities  that  have 
efficacy!  we  think  to  ourselves  —  why,  Hume  has  just 
told  us  that  in  the  matter  of  causation  we  must  not 
think  of  qualities  at  all !  "  The  supposition  of  an  efficacy 
in  any  of  the  known  qualities  of  matter  is  entirely  without 
foundation  ! "  And  that  means,  though  he  says,  "  known 
qualities,"  any  qualities,  as  implied  by  his  own  expressions 
now.  That  means,  too,  not  "matter"  alone,  but  any- 
thin-'  whatever ;  for  he  has  already  said  that,  so  far  as 
qualities  are  concerned,  anything  may  be  the  cause  of 
anything.  We  can  only  secure  to  Hume  some  measure 
of  consistency  here,  in  his  demand  to  proportionate  the 
qualities  in  the  cause  to  those  in  the  effect,  by  regarding 
the  qualities  as  themselves  objects,  by  assuming  out  of 
the  plurality  of  qualities  in  the  cause  and  in  the  effect 
one  quality  in  the  one,  to  have  always  been  respectively 
conjoined  with  a  correspondent  quality  in  the  other — a 
plurality  and  an  assumption,  plainly,  which  will  still 
bring  Hume  each  its  own  difficulties.  But  that  apart, 
what  of  the  subsequent  argumentation?  Now  that 
still  depends  on  the  presupposed  fulcrum,  the  intention 
of  which  we  must  see  to  have  been  this :  In  reasoning 
from  the  world  to  God,  and  so  reaching  God,  we  must 
not  proceed  to  dwell  on  the  idea  reached,  and  so  expand 
it  in  our  imaginations  beyond  what  constituted  it  as 
reached  and  ivhen  reached.  Really  in  that  lies  the  whole 
subsequent  argumentation  itself,  just  as  in  what  was  said 
of  proportionate  qualities  in  the  cause  and  the  effect, 
we  saw  the  one  fulcrum  in  support  of  such  argumentation. 
"  The  same  rule  holds,"  Hume  says,  "  whether  the  cause 
assigned  be  brute  unconscious  matter  or  a  rational  intel- 
ligent being:  if  the  cause  be  known  only  by  the  effect, 
we  never  ought  to  assign  to  it  any  qualities  beyond  what 
are  precisely  requisite  to  produce  the  effect ;  nor  can  we, 


APPLIED  TO  THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  WORLD.  255 

by  any  rules  of  just  reasoning,  return  back  from  the  cause 
and  infer  other  efl'ects  from  it  beyond  those  by  which 
alone  it  is  known  to  us."  And  this  here  evidently 
means  that  if  the  order  in  nature  entitles  us  to  infer  an 
artificer  of  greal  power  and  great  wisdom,  it  is  inadequate 
to  the  conclusion  of  almighty  power  and  almighty  wisdom, 
and  may  not  improbably  suggest  other  very  different 
attributes  from  those  of  all-justice  and  all-goodness.  In 
point  of  fact,  it  is  precisely  of  such  propos  on  the  p 
Hume  that  the  whole  subsequent  argumentation  consists. 
It  seems  to  have  been  summed  up  by  some  writers  in 
this  way,  that  they  supposed  Hume  to  say  that  the  world 
was  a  "  singular  effect."  That  is  true,  however,  only  in 
so  far  as  singular  shall  be  allowed  to  be  equal  to  parti- 
cular, so  that  we  are  to  infer  a  particular  cause  from  the 
particular  effect  that  the  world  is.  If  Hume  uses  singular 
of  the  world,  the  word  does  not  mean  for  him,  then, 
unexampled,  unprecedented,  incommensurable,  transcen- 
dent beyond  all  relation  or  comparison,  but  simply,  as 
I  have  said,  and  in  the  sense  I  have  said,  particular. 
liven  when  a  doubt  is  expressed  whether  it  be  possible 
for  a  cause  to  be  known  "only  by  (that  is,  only  so  far  as) 
its  effect,  or  to  be  of  so  singular  and  particular  a  nature 
as  to  have  no  parallel  and  no  similarity  with  any  other 
cause  or  object  that  has  ever  fallen  under  our  observa- 
tion," what  is  really  meant  is  precisely  what  1  mean  by 
particular:  the  effect  of  the  doubt  is  to  a  singularity  or 
particularity  that  would  bind  down  the  reasoning  to 
itself  alone,  which  doubt,  moreover,  is  put  into  the  mouth 
of  the  opponent  to  the  argument,  who,  however,  Ls  repre- 
sented to  acknowledge  in  the  end  that  the  previous 
reasonings  on  the  supposition  of  a  singular  elicit 
warrant  in--  no  more  than  an  equally  singular  cause, 
"seem  at  least  to  merit  our  attention.  Their  is,  I  own  " 
(he  concludes),  "  some  difficulty  how  we  can  ever  return 


GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

from  the  cause  to  the  effect,  and  reasoning  from  our 
ideas  of  the  former,  infer  any  alteration  on  the  latter  or 
any  addition  to  it  ; "  and  these  are  the  very  last  words  of 
the  whole  section.  To  say  then  that  Hume  calls  the 
world  a  "  singular  "  effect,  means  only,  Hume  holds  the 
world  to  be  a  particular  effect,  referring  only  to  a  pro- 
portionately particular  cause. 

We  have  now  seen  as  much  as  I  think  it  was  necessary 
to  see  of  the  Treatise  and  the  Enquiry,  and  I  return  to 
the  consideration  of  the  Dialogues.  They  are  laid  out 
into  twelve  parts,  but  one  cannot  say  that  so  much 
externality  has  any  bearing  on  the  internality  of  the 
development  and  exposition  of  the  subject.  While  the 
ontological  and  cosmological  arguments,  if  touched  at  all, 
are  no  more  than  touched,  the  teleological  argument  is, 
on  its  side,  only  most  inefficiently  and  disappointingly 
scattered,  in  a  mere  miscellany  of  remark,  over  the  whole 
dozen  dialogues,  or  so-called  parts.  This  argument, 
though  all  but  exclusively  the  single  subject  of  con- 
sideration, is  indeed  most  confusedly  presented  to  us. 
and  in  a  mass,  simply,  of  unmethodized  objections.  Not 
but  that  Hume  has,  in  his  secret  self,  all  his  life  dwelt 
on  the  question  of  a  God,  and  gives  here  now  most 
respectful  voice  to  his  estimation  of  it.  "  What  truth," 
he  says  (and  these  are  about  his  first  words) — "  what 
truth  so  important  as  this  (the  Being  of  a  God,  namely ). 
which  is  the  ground  of  all  our  hopes,  the  surest  founda- 
tion of  morality,  the  firmest  support  of  society,  and  the 
only  principle  which  ought  never  to  be  a  moment  absent 
from  our  thoughts  aud  meditations  ? "  Why,  that  is  a 
sentence  which  Lord  Gifford  himself  might  have  included 
without  a  jar  among  his  own  so  very  similar  sentences  in 
the  body  of  his  Bequest.  And  in  regard  to  the  subject 
itself,  even  as  named,  Natural  Theology,  Hume  speaks 
always  not  less  with  the  most  impressive  respect.      It  is 


CHRY8IPPUS  IX  PLUTAECH.  257 

"  the  saying  of  an  ancient,"  he  remarks,  not  far  from  the 
sentence  quoted,  "'That   students   of   philosophy  ought 
first   to  learn  Logics,  then   Ethics,  next   Physics,  L 
all  the  Nature  of  the  Gods.'      This  science  of  Xatura 
Theology,  according  to  him,  heing  the  most  profound  and 
abstruse  of  any,  required   the  maturest  judgment  in   its 
students,  and  none  but  a   mind    enriched  with   all   the 
other  sciences  can  safely   be   entrusted  with  it."     This 
position   assigned   to   our   subject,   Natural   Theology,  is 
probably  no  more  than   in  itself  it   deserves;  but  it  is 
not  so  certain  thai   Hume  is  correct  in  his  interpretation 
of   the  authority  he  quotes.      That   authority   he  names 
Chrysippus  in  a  certain  passage  of  Plutarch's.      Hume 
now,  in  his  Autobiography,  takes  credit  to  himself,  as  we 
know,  for  having  recovered,  while  living  with  his  mother 
and  brother  in  the  country,  "  the  knowledge  of  the  Greek 
language,  which  he  had  too  much  neglected  in  his  early 
youth."     David's  Greek,  I  fear,  might  have  stood  a  little 
more  recovery.      In  his  own  editions  of  his  books  it  has 
mostly  a  very  shabby  look  :  and  certainly  here,  so  far  as 
the    translation   goes,  it    does   not    come    well   to   proof. 
Hume  does  not  give  the  original,  but  I   have  looked   up 
the  Greek  and  transcribed  it  here  (TrpoiTov  fiev  ovv  Bo/cel 
fioi,  Kara   ra  opuo)$  vtto  twv  apyauov  eipr^fxeva  rpia  yevrj 
Twv    rov    (pLXoaocpov    Oewp-qpLUTOiv    elvac   ra    fihv    XoyiKii, 
ra  oe  tJulko.,  tcl  Be  cpvaiKci-  twv  Be  (pvai/ccbv  eayarov  eli'ai 
rbv  irepl   rwv  detov  Xoyov).      Literally  translated,  it  runs 
thus:  "First  then,  ii  seems  to  me,  a-  was  rightly  said  by 
the  ancients,  that  there  are  three  kinds  of  theorizings  of 
the    philosopher,   Logics,   Ethics,    Physie>.    and    that   of 
Physics  the  last  part  is  that  concerning  the  Gods."     We 
have  thus  three  sciences,  and  in  a  certain  succession,  but 
it  is  not  intimated  that  they  are  to  be  so  studied,  and 
still  less  that  what  concerns  the  Gods  is  a  fourth  study, 
and  one  which  is  to  be  taken  alone  after  the  other  three. 

B 


258  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

On  the  contrary,  what  concerns  the  Gods  is  only  termed 
the  last  part  of  physics.  Nay,  if  the  good  David  had 
only  read  further,  he  would  have  found  the  Greek  going 
on  to  speak  of  physics,  and  specially  that  last  part  of 
physics,  not  as  dependent  on  and  following  ethics,  but  as 
precedent  to  and  conditioning  ethics  (Plut.  de  repug. 
Stoicorum,  or  de  stoic,  paradox,  Opp.  i.  p.  1035  A).  And 
it  stands  to  reason  that  the  practical  moral  should 
postulate  beforehand  all  that  can  be  theoretically  known. 
The  passage,  however,  gives  certainly  an  eminent  place 
to  what  concerns  the  Gods ;  and  Hume,  let  his  Greek  be 
what  it  may,  is  to  be  justified  in  referring  to  it  in  support 
of  the  supremacy  as  a  study  of  Natural  Theology.  It  is 
not  a  little  to  his  praise,  indeed,  that,  after  Paris,  and 
D'Holbach,  and  the  seventeen  atheists  who  surrounded 
him, — after  these  experiences,  and  no  less  than  twenty- 
seven  years  of  labour  and  reflection,  he  should  so 
unequivocally  declare  himself. 

If,  as  regards  the  Dialogues,  we  take  Hume's  im- 
methodical  miscellany  interrogatively  in  hand,  and  intro- 
duce such  order  and  arrangement  into  it  as  shall  enable 
us  with  confidence  and  ease  to  grasp  its  reasonings,  we 
shall  find  these  susceptible  of  falling  into  such  a  scheme 
as  this  : — Taking  advantage  of  expressions  of  Hume's 
own,  we  may  say  that  the  arguments  in  question  are, 
first  of  all,  either  d  priori  or  a  posteriori  ;  and  then,  that 
while,  in  the  latter  class,  the  teleological  stands  alone, 
both  the  ontological  and  the  cosmological  are,  by  Hume, 
conjoined  in  the  former.  It  cannot  be  said,  however, 
that  the  cosmological  argument  is  strictly  or  purely  a 
priori;  for,  in  reality,  it  involves  an  empirical  fulcrum,  an 
empirical  basis  of  support.  Nevertheless,  as,  any  further, 
it  may  be  named  abstract  only,  the  cosmological  argument 
may  be  regarded  as  constituting,  from  its  peculiarity,  an 
exact  mean  between  the  two  other  arguments. 


THE  OXTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT.  259 

Taking  the  ontological  argument  first,  then,  we  find 
that  it  can  hardly  be  more  perfectly  and  coir 
expressed  than  by  Hume  himself.  In  an  early  menu  >]- 
andum  book  of  his,  copied  out  by  Burton,  it  appears 
thus :  "  The  idea  of  infinite  perfection  implies  that  of 
actual  existence."  Of  the  very  idea  of  God,  namely, 
exigence  is  a  necessary  complement.  Hume,  in  his 
Dialogues,  quotes  Malebranche  to  the  effect  that  Being 
simply,  Being,  existence,  is  the  very  nature  of  God — ;(  His 
true  name  is,  He  that  is,  or  in  other  words,  Being  withoul 
restriction,  All  Being,  the  Being  infinite  and  universal." 
In  Part  IX.,  however,  where  the  d  priori  argument  is 
expressly  placed,  Hume  has  already  dismissed  this  idea 
of  Malebranche  from  his  mind,  and  perhaps  quite  for- 
gotten  his  own  early  statement.  There  his  statement 
now  of  the  ontological  argument  is  that  it  regard- 
as  the  "  necessarily  existent  Being,  who  carries  the  reason 
of  His  existence  in  Himself,  and  who  cannot  be  supposed 
not  to  exist  without  an  express  contradiction;"  but  of 
"  this  metaphysical  reasoning,"  as  he  names  it,  Hume, 
who  characterizes  it  also  as  obviously  ill-grounded  and  of 
"  little  consequence,"  will  show,  he  says,  the  "  weakness  " 
and  the  "  fallacy."  "  I  shall  begin  with  observing,"  he 
declares,  "  that  there  is  an  evident  absurdity  in  pretending 
to  demonstrate  a  matter  of  fact."  "  Nothing  is  demon- 
strable, unless  the  contrary  implies  a  contradiction. 
Nothing  that  is  distinctly  conceivable  implies  a  contra- 
diction. "Whatever  we  conceive  as  existent  we  can  also 
conceive  as  non-existent.  There  is  no  being,  therefore. 
whose  non  -  existence  implies  a  contradiction.  Conse- 
quently there  is  no  being  win  ise  existence  is  demonstrable. 
1  propose  this  argument  as  entirely  decisive,  and  am 
willing  to  rest  the  whole  controversy  upon  it."  The 
reply  to  tins,  of  course,  is,  that  God,  as  the  Infinite 
Being,  is   above  and  beyond  all  such  reasoning,  limited 


260  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

and  restricted,  as  it  is,  only  to  what  is  finite.  God,  as 
the  Infinite  Being  implies  existence  :  to  deny  His  existence, 
negates  his  very  idea,  and  is  a  direct  self-contradiction. 
But  we  have  to  see  more  of  this  later  when  we  come  to 
Kant. 

Hume  continues,  "  Why  may  not  the  material  universe 
lie  the  necessarily  -  existent  Being  ?  "  "  It  may  contain 
some  qualities  which  would  make  its  non  -  existence 
appear  as  great  a  contradiction  as  that  twice  two  is  five." 
■  No  reason  can  be  assigned  why  these  qualities  may  not 
belong  to  matter ;  as  they  are  altogether  unknown  and 
inconceivable,  they  can  never  be  proved  incompatible 
with  it."  I  fancy  we  will  all  allow  the  irrefragableness 
of  that  reasoning :  it  would  be  a  hard  matter  for  any  of 
us  to  prove  that  whatever  is  utterly  unknown  and  incon- 
ceivable is  incompatible  with  anything  whatever  !  To 
talk  of  the  inconceivable  as  a  possible  fulcrum  of  proof 
is  surely  peculiar  to  Hume.  He  says  himself  that  "  to 
establish  one  hypothesis  upon  another  is  building  entirely 
in  the  air : "  to  build  upon  the  inconceivable  is  hardly 
different  or  better.  But  why  the  material  universe  may 
not  be  the  necessarily-existent  Being  is  precisely  the 
cosmolo"ical  argument  which  comes  now  in  its  turn. 
Hume  himself  mentions  this  argument  as  "  derived  from 
the  contingency  both  of  the  matter  and  the  form  of  the 
world  ; "  nevertheless,  as  he  seems  to  found  his  notion 
of  contingency  only  on  Dr.  Clarke's  representation 
that  "  any  particle  of  matter  may  be  conceived  to  be  annihil 
ated,  and  any  form  may  be  conceived  to  be  altered,"  we 
cannot  feel  sure  that  what  he  has  got  hold  of  is  the 
quite  adequate  notion.  That  notion,  however,  is  simply 
to  the  effect  that  contingent  existence,  by  very  name, 
means  what  is,  what  exists,  simply  as  supported,  and  as 
unsupported,  sinks,  falls, — must  sink,  must  fall,  and  drop 
out  of  being.      That  is  the  contingent ;  while  e  contrario, 


THE  COSMOLOGICAL  ABGUMENT.  261 

the  necessary  is  the  self-supported,  the  self-subsistent,  or 
the  self-existent,  the  complete  in  itself  and  sufficient  of 
itself.  By  very  definition,  then,  or  by  very  nature,  it 
E(  ill  iws  that  the  former  implies  the  latter.  The  contingent 
infers  the  necessary,  the  accidental  the  substantial,  by 
which  or  in  which  it  is.  That  simple  notion,  now.  is  the 
fulcrum  of  the  cosmological  argument ;  yet,  simple  as  it  is, 
Hume,  on  the  whole,  does  not  quite  seem  at  home  in  it. 
While  it  is  his  single  purpose  in  Tart  IX.,  for  example,  to 
dispute,  controvert,  and  refute  it  ;  he  had  already  passed 
his  own  deep  imprimatur  upon  it  in  the  second  part,  when 
he  said,  "  nothing  exists  without  a  cause  ;  and  the  original 
cause  of  this  universe  we  call  God  :  Whoever  scruples 
this  fundamental  truth,  deserves  every  punishment,"  etc. 
But  as  much  as  this,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see,  constitutes 
the  whole  cosmological  argument,  for  it  simply  refers 
what  is  contingent,  what  is  insufficient  of  itself  to  God, 
to  that  cause  which  is  alone  necessary,  alone  ultimate 
and  final  in  itself.  In  Part  IX.,  however,  somewhat  con- 
tradictorily, Hume  argues  against  this  reasoning  in  some 
such  strain  as  follows  : — 

He  starts,  as  already  referred  to,  with  the  question, 
"  Why  may  not  the  material  universe  be  the  necessarily- 
existent  Being  ? "  and  when  he  is  answered  by  the  cos- 
molocrical  argument  which  rests  on  the  necessity  of  a 
regress  through  a  whole  possible  chain  of  contingent 
causes  back  to  a  single  absolute  cause,  he  rejoins :  "  In 
such  a  chain,  each  part  is  caused  by  that  which  preceded 
it,  and  causes  that  which  succeeds  it — where,  then,  is  the 
difficulty?  But  the  whole,  you  say,  wants  a  cause.  I 
answer — this  is  sufficiently  explained  in  explaining  the 
cause  of  the  parts — add  to  this,  that  in  tracing  an 
eternal  succession  of  objects,  it  seems  absurd  to  ask  Eor  a 
general  cause  or  first  author."  That,  as  one  sees,  is  not 
profound  argumentation  ;    and  it   will    be    sufficient    to 


262  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

remark  for  the  pres?nt  that  no  multiplication  of  parts 
will  make  a  whole  potent  if  each  part  is  impotent.  You 
will  hardly  reach  a  valid  conclusion  where  your  every 
step  is  invalid.  Will  you  ever  fill  one  full  with  nothing 
but  empties,  or  put  together  a  single  significant  figure 
with  a  million  millions  of  ciphers  ?  It  will  be  in  vain  to 
extract  one  necessity  out  of  a  whole  infinitude  of  con- 
tingencies. Nor  is  it  at  all  possible  for  such  infinitude 
of  contingencies  to  be  even  conceivable  of  reason.  If 
each  link  of  the  chain  hangs  on  another,  the  whole  will 
hang,  and  only  hang  even  in  eternity,  unsupported, 
like  some  stark  serpent — unless  you  find  a  hook  for 
it.  Add  weakness  to  weakness,  in  any  quantity,  you 
will  never  make  strength  ;  if  you  totter  already, 
the  tottering  against  you  of  ever  so  many  totterers  will 
only  floor  you. 

But,  on  the  whole,  Hume  may  be  said  only  to  mention, 
and  not  seriously  to  meet,  what  are  to  him  the  d  priori 
arguments.  On  the  d  posteriori  argument  it  is  that  he 
puts  forth  all  his  strength.  Even  here,  however,  his 
strength  is  but  a  sceptical  play  ;  for  it  is  at  least  as  a 
sincere  Deist  that  he  takes  up  his  position  before  the 
curtain  in  the  end.  Nevertheless,  when  one  considers 
how  Adam  Smith  and  the  rest  were  glad  to  escape  any 
responsibility  here,  our  curiosity  is  roused,  and  we  would 
fain  see  for  ourselves  the  terrible  argumentation  that  had 
so  frightened  them.  Allowing  for  the  ninth  part,  which 
we  have  just  seen,  for  the  first  and  last  parts  as  only 
the  one  introductory  and  the  other  concluding,  and  for 
two  other  parts  which  are  taken  up  with  little  more  than 
tirades  on  the  evils  of  existence,  there  remain  seven  parts 
in  which  the  strict  teleological  argument  is  alone  con- 
sidered. As  I  have  said,  the  conduct  of  the  dialogue  is 
so  miscellaneous  in  these  parts  that,  for  one's  ease,  even 
for  one's  intelligence,  one  is  glad  to  turn  to  some  principle 


THE  TELEOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT.  2G3 

of  arrangement.  Now  what  is  considered  here  is  God  on 
one  side  and  man  on  the  other,  with  the  analogy  of 
design  between  them  ;  and  it  is  with  such  scheme  we  may 
conceive  Hume  to  open.  Accordingly,  the  omnipotence 
of  God,  even  as  in  supposition,  is  described  at  great  length 
on  the  one  side,  as  the  impotence  of  man  at  equal  length 
on  the  other,  and  it  is  asked,  Can  there  be  any  analogy 
between  them  ?  Man's  sentiments  are  "  calculated  for 
promoting  the  activity  and  preserving  the  existence  "  of 
such  a  finite  being ;  his  ideas,  "  derived  from  the  senses, 
are  confusedly  (confessedly  ?)  false  and  illusive  ;  "  and  as 
these  "  compose  the  whole  furniture  of  the  human  under- 
standing," how  can  such  materials  be  "  in  any  respect 
similar  in  the  human  and  in  the  divine  intelligence "  ? 
Are  we  not  "  guilty  of  the  grossest  and  most  narrow 
partiality,  when  we  make  ourselves  the  model  of  the 
whole  universe  "  ?  Of  course,  the  reply  to  such  objections 
is  obvious.  In  arguing  from  design  we  simply  use  the 
reason  which  is  our  very  power  and  our  very  selves  ;  and 
in  which,  with  whatever  accidents,  we  have  all  history 
and  all  science  to  support  and  encourage  our  trust.  Nor 
do  we  desire  in  the  smallest  degree  to  push  our  reason 
beyond  what  bounds  it  can  itself  realize.  "We  may  pre- 
sume that  reply  sufficient  for  Hume  himself  even  on  his 
own  principles  ;  for  he  will  be  found  to  grant  us  the  right 
of  speculation  and  inquiry  to  any  extent,  and  into  any 
region  which  the  desire  of  knowledge,  the  love  of  truth, 
or  even  mere  human  curiosity  may  suggest.  To  as  much 
as  that,  indeed,  his  own  example  would  warrant,  not  only 
liberty,  but  one  might  even  say,  licence.  "We  turn  now, 
then,  to  the  third  consideration  which  we  have  indicated 
here,  the  middle  that  lies  between  the  two  extremes  of 
God  on  the  one  side  and  man  on  the  other,  the  argu- 
ment from  design  itself.  That  we  shall  see  again. 
Meantime,  I  may  seem,  so  far,  to  have  been  only  cursory 


2G4  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  THIRTEENTH. 

to  have  remarked  little,  and  to  have  quoted  less.     But 

I  have  really  given  all  that  there  is  in  Hume  as  regards 
either  the  ontological  or  the  cosmological  argument ;  and, 
perhaps  in  other  respects,  I  shall  be  found  in  the  end 
even  to  have  hit  the  truth  of  the  position  which  con- 
ditions Hume's  whole  way  of  looking. 


GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

Tin-  teleological  argument — Two  moments — First,  the  alleged  ne- 
cessity of  thought — It  has  itself  no  end — So  matter  enough — 
Thought  itself  only  a  part,  limited,  imperfect,  and  in  want  of 
explanation — Thought  as  thought  common  to  us  all,  Grote, 
Hume,  Erigena,  Heraclitus — The  sole  necessity — Second,  tin- 
analogy — The  supreme  cause  not  situated  as  other  causes — 
Other  principles,  vegetation,  generation — The  world  an  animal 
— The  Empedoclean  expedient — The  effect  only  warrants  great 
power,  not  Almighty  power—  Evil — Free  opinion — Hume's 
friends  —  Epicurus's  dilemma  —  Superstition  results  —  Four 
suggestions — No  pain — Special  volitions — Greater  strength — 
Extremes  banished  from  the  world — Creation  on  general  prin- 
ciples— Erasmus  Darwin — Mr.  Froude,  Carlyle — Finitude  as 
such,  externality  as  such — Antithesis — Charles  V. — Abdal- 
rahman  III.  —  Septimius  Severus  —  Johnson  —  Per  contra — 
Wordsworth,  Gihhon,  Hume — Work,  Carlyle — The  trades — 
Comparison  —  Self-contradiction  —  Identity — Hegel  —  "As  re- 
gards Protoplasm  " — The  Hindoos — Burton  on  cause — Sir  John 
Herschel  —  Brown,  Dugald  Stewart  —  Spinoza  —  Erdmann  — 
Notions  and  things,  Erigena— Rabelais — Form  and  matter — 
Hume  in  conclusion. 

Hume's  discussion,  in  his  Dialogues,  of  the  teleological 
argument,  the  argument  from  design,  random  as  it  runs, 
requires,  in  the  first  place,  such  arrangement  as  shall 
extend  to  us  the  ease  of  intelligence  which  is  so  necessary 
here — such  arrangement  as  has  been  already  referred  to. 
The  entire  scattered  discussion,  then,  we  reduce  to,  and 
consider  in,  the  following  order,  an  order  suggested  by 
the  single  argument  itself,  which  this  discussion  would 
overthrow.  That  single  argument  is  this.  The  design 
which    is    admitted    to    exist    in    the  world  infers — by 


26G  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

the  necessity  of  thought,  according  to  the  principle  of 
analogy — the  existence  also,  or  coexistence,  of  a  designer. 
Now,  here  it  is  only  the   inference   that  is  denied,  and 
not  the  design  it  founds  on:  the  design  itself  is  admitted 
to  exist,      But  that  inference  can  be  opposed  only  in  one 
or  other  of  its  two  moments.      Either  its  first  moment 
(A),    the    alleged    necessity   of    thought,    or    its    second 
moment  (B),  the  alleged  analogy,  is  the  subject  of  denial 
and  dispute.     On  the  first  head,  (A)  it  is  first  (1)  argued, 
that,  granting  the  necessity  of  thought,  it  is  not  com- 
pleted or  concluded  by  the  inference,  but  continues  to  be 
equally  valid  further.      If  a  material  world,  or  universe 
of  objects,  be  such  as  to  require  a  cause  for  the  arrange- 
ment in  it ;  not  less  will  a  mental  world,  or  universe  of 
ideas,  to  which  as  cause  the  arrangement  has  only  been 
transferred,  require  for  itself  a  cause — a  cause  of  its  own. 
God  Himself,  that  is,  if    offered   as   cause  for  the  one 
world,    would    constitute    in    Himself    just    such    other 
mental  world,  and  would  equally  stand  in  need  of  just 
such  another  cause.     The  explanation  is  only  shifted  one 
step   back,  thinks  Hume ;  but  why  stop  at   the  first  re- 
move ?     "  If  we  stop,  and  go  no  farther,"  he  says,  "  why 
go  so  far  ?  "     "  Why  not  stop  at  the  material  world  ?  " 
"  If  the  material  world  rests  upon  a  similar  ideal  world, 
this  ideal  world  must  rest  upon  some  other ;  and  so  on, 
without  end."     "  That  the  parts  of  the  material  world 
fall  into   order    of    themselves"    is    "as    intelligible   as 
that  the  ideas  of  the  Supreme  Being  fall  into  order  of 
themselves."     And  that  being  so,  "  we  really  assert  the 
material   world   to   be   God;  and   the  sooner  we  arrive 
at  that  Divine  Being,  so  much  the  better."     These  are 
Hume's  own  words ;  and  it  is  really  sufficient  reply,  so 
far,  to    say :   There  is    no  principle  in  matter  itself  to 
explain    the    design   it    exhibits;  only  a    Designer    can 
explain   that.      So   far  we  believe  our   argument  valid  ; 


MATTER  ENOUGH.  267 

and  so  far  we  challenge  disproof.  To  ask  a  second 
question  is  not  to  dispose  of  the  first.  (2)  A  Becond 
objection  to  the  necessity  of  thought  is:  That  it  does  nol 
apply:  we  are  but  a  part — our  thought  is  but  the  part 
of  a  pari  ;  and  it  is  in  vain  to  apply  a  part  in  ex- 
planation of  the  whole.  Nay,  (3)  in  the  third  place,  our 
thought,  even  as  in  us,  requires  an  explanation;  at  the 
same  time  that,  (4)  in  the  fourth  place,  it  is  so  limited 
and  imperfect  that  we  can  place  no  dependence  upon  it. 
I  think,  however,  it  will  be  plain  that  these  are  cavils, 
so  far,  rather  than  arguments.  It  is  not  true  that 
thought  can  he  characterized  as  only  a  part  in  reference 
to  the  whole;  nor  do  we  apply  it,  or  wish  to  apply 
it,  otherwise  than  as  it  justifies  itself.  It  may,  in 
individuals,  and  at  times,  err  indeed;  hut  it  is  caricature 
to  throw  it  out  of  count,  because,  as  Hume  says,  "we 
never  find  two  persons  who  think  exactly  alike,  nor  docs 
the  same  person  think  exactly  alike  at  any  two  different 
periods  of  time."  Mr.  Grote  borrows  these  words,  and 
relying  upon  them,  cannot  help  exclaiming  in  perfect 
astonishment,  "Can  it  really  be  necessary  to  repeal  that 
the  reason  of  one  man  differs  most  materially  from  that 
of  another  ?  "  To  which,  in  the  very  intensity  of  its 
shallow  conviction,  I  reply,  "  Can  it  really  be  necessary 
to  repeat  that  the  reason  of  one  man  docs  not  differ 
most  materially  from  that  of  another;  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  reason  of  one  man  is  essentially  identical  with 
that  of  another?"  Here,  in  fact,  ('.rote  has  not  only 
forgot  Hume,  but  Hume  has  forgol  himself;  asserting, 
as  he  does  elsewhere,  that  "there  La  a  great  uniformity 
among  men  in  all  nations  and  ages,  and  human  nature 
rem  iins  still  the  same."  That  is  to  the  cited  that  there 
is  hut  one  reason,  which  is  the  truth  and  the  cosmical 
tart,  though  we  had  to  go  further  hack  for  it  than 
the    intellect™    of    Srutus    Erigena,   or   even    the    \oycK 


268  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

fw/0'9  of  Heraclitus.  Thought  is  the  one  generality, 
the  one  universality,  the  one  general  solvent,  the  one 
universal  solvent,  which  nothing  may  resist.  "And 
what  wonder!"  says  Scotus  Erigena,  "what  wonder  if 
the  notion  of  things  which  the  human  mind  possesses, 
concreated  with  itself,  is  found  to  be  the  true  substance 
of  the  things  themselves  of  which  it  is  the  notion  ?  " 
The  universal,  as  the  universal,  is  its  own  principle 
and  its  own  basis  of  support.  Thought,  even  as  thought, 
accounts  for  its  own  self,  if  not  in  the  finitude  of  man, 
then  in  the  infinitude  of  God.  There  it  is  the  one 
dvdy/cT],  the  sole  necessity,  that  that  could  not  not-be  ! 

And  with  this  we  may  suppose  sufficiently  met  and 
discussed  all  that  Hume  has  objected  to  the  necessity 
of  thought.  Matter  cannot  account  for  its  own  arrange- 
ment ;  a  part  may  apply  to  the  whole,  if  that  part  is 
thought ;  which  again,  as  in  the  race,  is  not  incomplete 
and  partial,  but,  as  primal  entity,  as  sole  and  primal 
duajKr)  is,  with  God,  the  reason  for  itself.  In  fact,  in 
the  whole  of  the  relative  reasoning,  there  is  not  one  reason- 
able word  why  man  may  not  think  the  design  which  is  as 
undeniable  in  his  own  self  as  everywhere  around  him. 

The  second  object  of  the  attack  of  Hume  is  (B)  the 
analogy.  Man,  as  a  thinking  being,  recognises  in  nature 
such  adjustment  of  means  to  ends  as  is  in  perfect  analogy 
with  what  he  knows  to  be  the  product  and  result  of 
design  in  the  experiences  and  proceedings  of  his  natural 
life  in  common  with  his  fellows  upon  earth.  Now,  Hume's 
objections  here  may  be  arranged  according  as  they  seem 
to  concern  more  especially  the  cause,  or  more  especially 
the  effect. 

In  the  first  place,  on  the  first  head,  he  intimates 
that  the  cause  is  not  placed  as  it  is  placed  in  the 
other  cases  to  which  we  are  accustomed.  In  these, 
we   have    usually    experience    of    both    terms.       If    we 


other  principles.  2G9 

infer  the  step  of  a  man  from  a  footprint  in  the  sand, 
say,  the  cause  is  already  known  to  us  from  a  great 
number  of  other  effects,  and  the  inference,  consequently, 
does  not  really  depend  on  the  single  experience. 
And  then,  in  point  of  fact,  what  we  see  in  matter  may 
depend  on  principles  of  its  own.  We  cannot  say  that 
motion,  or  other  arrangement,  is  not  native  to  it  :  we 
have  never  assisted  at  the  origination  of  worlds:  we 
have  not,  as  elsewhere,  any  custom,  any  to  and  fro 
of  effect  to  cause,  or  of  cause  to  effect ;  we  have  no 
experience  of  the  divine.  Nay,  in  the  second  place, 
if  the  design  be  not  original  to  matter,  it  may  be  due 
to  other  principles  than  to  the  principle  of  thought, 
as  to  vegetation,  for  example,  or  to  generation.  We 
really  do  see  such  principles  operative  in  matter.  There 
is  motion  in  it ;  not  one  particle  of  matter,  probably, 
ever  is  at  rest.  Then  we  do  see  vegetation  and  genera- 
tion both  spontaneously  operative.  The  world  may  be 
as  a  tree  that  sheds  its  seed ;  or,  as  an  animal  that  lays 
its  eggs.  A  comet  may  be  a  seed— a  germ,  which, 
ripened  from  system  to  system,  may  itself  become  further 
in  the  inane  a  system  of  its  own.  And  so  it  may  have 
been  with  this  our  world,  which,  in  point  of  fact,  exhibits 
the  traces  of  innumerable  changes  before  it  settled  down 
into  the  orderly  arrangement  of  the  present.  Indeed,  in 
the  third  place,  the  whole  world  may  be  just  one  animal 
— an  animal  with  a  body,  and  an  animal  with  a  soul. 
This  was  an  idea  familiar  to  the  ancients,  who  could  not 
conceive,  as  we  do,  of  souls  purely  as  such— of  souls 
without  a  body.  The  world  has  really  much  more 
analogy  with  an  organized  body  than  with  a  mechanical 
contrivance.  "A  continual  circulation  of  matter  in  it 
produces  no  disorder:  a  continual  waste  in  every  part 
is  incessantly  repaired;  the  closest  sympathy  is  per- 
ceived throughout  the  entire  system;  and  each  pan  or 


270  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

member,  in  performing  its  proper  offices,  operates  both 
to  its  own  preservation  and  to  that  of  the  whole." 
Or,  in  the  fourth  place,  returning  to  the  idea  of  innate 
material  arrangement,  Hume  has  recourse  to  what  I  may 
call  the  Empedoclean  expedient.  We  may  remember 
Empedocles  to  have  feigned  the  present  orderly  organic 
world  to  be  due  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  in  this 
way.  that  the  earth  gave  birth  at  first  to  all  possible 
organisms,  so  to  speak,  pile  mile.  There  were  bull- 
headed  men,  and  olive-leaved  vines ;  but  in  that  hetero- 
geneous form  they  could  not  survive.  What  could  alone 
survive  was  the  homogeneous :  there  were  no  stable 
or  persistent  forms  till  only,  at  long  and  last,  when  what 
was  homogeneous  took  its  turn.  It  is  absolutely  the 
like  suggestion  that  Hume  now  makes  for  matter. 
The  particles  of  matter  are  all  in  motion ;  and  they  have 
been  in  motion  in  the  infinitude  of  time.  But,  so,  they 
must  have  undergone  an  infinitude  of  revolution — an 
infinitude  of  vicissitude  and  change ;  or,  the  complexions 
they  formed  must  have  passed  through  infinite  suc- 
cessions until,  I  suppose,  as  mathematically  demonstrable, 
the  present  complexion  emerged,  which,  being  orderly, 
is  more  or  less  permanent.  And  hence  the  appearance 
of  design. 

On  the  second  head,  as  concerns  the  effect,  Hume 
maintains,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  world  as  an  effect 
only  warrants  the  inference  to  great,  but  not  to  perfect 
power ;  while,  in  the  second  place,  the  existence  of  evil 
in  the  world  puts  us  in  no  very  hopeful  situation  as 
regards  the  moral  attributes  of  the  Deitv.  It  was  here, 
perhaps,  that  Hume's  friends,  one  and  all  of  them,  took 
fright  at  these  Dialogues,  and  positively  fled  from  any 
,  connection  with  the  publication  of  them.  Here,  indeed, 
Hume  is  so  very  free  in  his  objections  and  suggestions  to 
the  Almighty,  that  almost  in  these  more  audacious  days 


HUME'S  FBIENDS.  271 

they  may  shock  even  .us.  Hume  himself,  possibly,  had  a 
consciousness  of  something  of  this ;  for  these  words  of 
his  at  the  end  of  the  work  read  to  us  at  once  as  an 
apology  and  a  defence,  quite  as  though  it  was  to  these 
very  friends  he  spoke.  "  It  is  contrary  to  common  sense," 
he  says,  "  to  entertain  apprehensions  or  terrors  upon 
account  of  any  opinion  whatsoever,  or  to  imagine  that  we 
run  any  risk  hereafter  by  the  freest  use  of  our  reason." 
And  surely  it  will  appear  to  every  one  that,  as  we  are 
sent  here  to  think,  as  to  think  is  our  vocation,  we  shall 
hardly  be  held  responsible  for  the  expression  of  our 
thought,  provided  only  that  both  thought  and  expression 
are  serious  and  in  earnest.  Hume,  doubtless,  must  have 
considered  himself  sufficiently  within  these  bounds,  and 
must  have  been  both  vexed  and  surprised  at  the  scruples 
of  Smith  and  the  rest,  especially  in  view  of  his  having, 
by  express  name,  mentioned  and  met  the  very  apprehen- 
sion under  which,  it  could  not  but  seem,  they  laboured. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  quite  certain  that  Hume,  in  all  con- 
science, is  not  at  any  loss  for  boldness  here.  It  is 
scarcely  credible  that  the  evils  of  this  life  were  ever 
more  glaringly  painted,  or  the  emendations  of  them  ever 
more  unmisgivingly  proposed.  But,  after  all,  it  comes, 
on  the  one  head,  to  the  usual  tirades  about  misery  and 
pain,  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  customary  remonstrances 
with  the  Deity  for  failure  on  His  part  either  in  will  or  in 
power.  "  Epicurus's  old  questions  are  yet  unanswered," 
says  Hume,  "  Is  Clod  willing  to  prevent  evil,  but  not 
able  ?  then  is  lie  impotent.  Is  He  able,  but  uot  willing  ', 
then  is  He  malevolent.  Is  He  both  able  and  willing? 
whence  then  is  evil?"  "Why  is  there  any  misery  at 
all  in  the  world?"  And  human  life  is  human  misery 
within  and  without.  It  is  in  the  sense  of  his  own  im- 
becility to  meet  these  evils,  which  come  upon  him  from 
a  power  above  him,  that  man  growls   to  that   power,  and 


272  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

would  fain  conciliate  to  himself  its  good-will  by  flatteries 
and  gifts.  Hume  has  four  suggestions  of  remedy  in  these 
respects.  Like  Alfonzo  of  Castile,  had  he  been  present, 
in  the  beginning  of  creation,  at  the  counsels  of  the 
Almighty,  some  few  things,  he  thinks,  would  have  been 
better  and  more  orderly  arranged.  He  would,  in  the 
first  place,  have  made  all  living  creatures  incapable  of 
pain :  they  should  have  been  impelled  to  the  necessary 
action  only  by  the  diminution  of  pleasure.  In  the 
second  place,  he  would  have  remedied  all  impending  in- 
conveniences by  particular  volitions  :  he  would  have  given 
the  dram  to  his  brain  that  would  have  made  Caligula  a 
Trajan,  and  he  would  have  taken  care  to  save  the  Roman 
republic  by  swelling,  a  foot  or  two,  the  sea  that  threat- 
ened Caesar.  Thirdly,  he  would  have  endowed  all  animals 
with  a  much  more  satisfactory  stock  of  strength.  And 
fourthly,  he  would  have  given  an  amended  constitution 
to  the  universe  at  large :  the  wind  should  never  be 
allowed  to  become  a  storm,  the  heat  a  drought,  or  the 
rain  a  deluge.  "  So  many  ills  in  the  universe,"  says 
Hume,  "and  these  ills,  so  far  as  human  understanding 
can  be  permitted  to  judge,  might  so  easily  have  been 
remedied."  Why,  all  is  owing  simply  to  "  excess  or 
defect  "  in  consequence  of  "  inaccurate  workmanship  !  " 
These  are  but  a  word  or  two  from  the  pages  of  the 
original ;  but  they  may  serve  to  suggest  the  never- 
doubting  openness  of  Hume  in  the  story  he  tells  and 
the  propositions  he  makes.  Perhaps  of  all  these  propo- 
sitions, the  most  surprising,  as  on  the  part  of  Hume,  is 
that  of  a  particular  providence  that  would  be  on  its 
guard  always,  and  take  all  necessary  precautions  against 
accidental  inconveniences,  such  as  a  Caligula  or  a  Caesar. 
It  is  certain  that  in  another  work  {Enquiry,  vii.  1),  after 
long  consideration  and  careful  revision,  too,  Hume  holds 
it  to  argue  "  more  wisdom  in  the  Deity  "  to  contrive  a 


MR.  FROUBE CARLYLE.  273 

creation  on  general  principles  from  the  first,  and  "more 
power  "  to  delegate  authority  to  these  principles  "  than  to 
operate  everything  by  His  own  immediatevolitibn."  Erasmus 
Darwin,  too,  will  be  found  to  express  himself  strongly  to 
ili<'  same  effect.  Bui  it  would  seem  that  others  later  in- 
cline to  Hume's  later  view,  and  would  like  a  God  that 
prevents  rain  at  harvest,  and  would  cut  in  pieces  before- 
hand the  murderers  of  a  Princesse  de  Lamballa  Mr. 
Froude,  in  his  Life  of  Carlyh  (ii.  2G0),  writes:  "I  once 
said  to  him  (Carlyle)  not  long  before  his  death,  that  I 
could  only  believe  in  a  God  who  did  something.  With 
a  cry  of  pain,  which  I  shall  never  forget,  he  (Carlyle) 
said,  'He  does  nothing!'"  One  may  be  permitted  to 
express  one's  surprise  here  at  such  crude  doctrine  under 
whatever  or  whichever  name.  It  is  altogether  to  mis- 
take the  very  possibility  of  a  universe  to  hang  a  God 
over  it,  like  a  big  man  in  the  air,  to  overlook,  and  inter- 
fere, and  see  that  our  children  do  not  burn  themselves. 
There  is  the  fang  of  the  serpent  and  the  claw  of  the 
tiger — I  suppose  these  gentlemen  would  have  God  draw 
both;  and  we  must  not  be  incommoded  in  summer  with 
nudges  on  the  Clyde.  A  creation  is,  by  the  very  terms 
of  it,  the  finite  as  the  finite,  externality  as  externality. 
Now,  finitude  as  fmitude,  externality  as  externality, 
brings  with  it  its  own  conditions  just  as  surely  as  the 
triangle  involves  its  own  necessity  of  two  right  angles,  or 
parallel  lines,  theirs  never  to  meet.  To  have  light  you 
must  put  up  with  shade,  and  to  have  warmth  you  must 
submit  to  cold;  you  cannot  have  a  right  hand  unless 
you  have  a  left.  All  in  the  phenomenon  is  contradiction, 
and  it  cannot  be  otherwise  if  there  is  to  be  a  phenomenon 
at  all.  The  same  >tiv>>  that  would  take  us  to  the  sun 
baulks  for  ever  our  approach  to  it.  If  you  draw  close 
to  me,  I  embrace  you  as  my  friend  ;  but  if  you  draw 
closer  still,  I  repel  you  as  my  enemy.     Were  attraction 

s 


274  G1FF0KD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

alone  in  this  universe,  things  would  be  reduced  to  a 
mathematical  point;  and  were  repulsion  all,  there  would 
he  nothing  but  a  blank.  There  cannot  be  union  without 
disunion,  nor  this  without  that.  These  and  other  such- 
like contrarieties,  infinitely,  are  the  terms  on  which  you 
have  a  finite  universe,  and  alone  the  terms  on  which  you 
possibly  can  have  it.  If  you  will  be,  then  you  must  be 
in  the  stress  of  adversatives.  The  single  necessity  of 
the  necessity  to  be  is  its  own  opposite — contingency. 
And  what  does  that  amount  to  ?  It  amounts  to  this  : 
Destroy  evil  and  you  are  straightway  felo  de  se,  you  have 
committed  suicide ;  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  abolish 
contingency,  which  is  at  once  the  sole  source  of  evil  and 
the  secret  of  the  universe — abolish  contingency  and  you 
abolish  existence,  you  destroy  what  it  is  to  exist.  When 
all  is  considered,  I  fancy  we  have  but  little  business  to 
set  so  much  store  by  all  these  "  racking  pains,"  which 
Hume  enumerates,  of  "  gouts,  gravels,  megrims,  tooth- 
aches, rheumatisms."  The  toothache  alone  is  certainly 
bad  enough ;  but  I  do  not  see  that  we  have  any  right  to 
make  such  a  noise  about  toothache,  were  it  only  for  our 
friends,  the  dentists  !  I  suppose  Hume  here  would  say, 
as  he  literally  does  say,  "  If  you  feel  not  human  misery 
yourself,  I  congratulate  you  on  so  happy  a  singularity. 
Others,  seemingly  the  most  prosperous,  have  not  been 
ashamed  to  vent  their  complaints  in  the  most  melan- 
choly strains.  Let  us  attend  to  the  great,  the  fortunate 
Emperor  Charles  V.,  when,  tired  with  human  grandeur, 
he  resigned  all  his  extensive  dominions  into  the  hands  of 
his  son.  In  the  last  harangue  which  he  made  on  that 
memorable  occasion,  he  publicly  avowed,  that  the  greatest 
prosperities  which  he  had  ever  enjoyed  had  been  mixed  with 
so  many  adversities  that  he  might  truly  say  he  had  never 
>  njoyed  any  satisfaction  or  contentment.  But  did  the 
retired  life,  in  which  he  sought  for  shelter,  afford  him  any 


ABDALBAHMAN  III.,  ETC.  2  ,  5 

greater  happiness!  If  we  may  credit  his  son's  account, 
his  repentance  commenced  the  very  day  of  his  resigna- 
tion." Gibbon,  too,  would  seem  to  join  his  master  here, 
and  only  repeat  the  story.  Ee  transcribes  "an  authentic 
memorial  which  was  found  in  the  closet  of  the  deceased 
caliph,"  the  great  and  glorious  Abdalrahman  III.:  "I 
have  now  reigned  above  fifty  years  in  victory  or  peace; 
beloved  by  my  subjects,  dreaded  by  my  enemies,  and 
respected  by  my  allies,  liiches  and  honours,  power  and 
pleasure,  have  waited  od  my  call;  nor  dor-  any  earthly 
blessing  appear  to  have  been  wanting  to  my  felicity.  In 
this  situation  I  have  diligently  numbered  the  days  of 
pure  and  genuine  happiness  which  have  fallen  to  my  lot  : 
they  amount  to  fourteen.  0  man,  place  not  thy  con- 
fidence in  this  present  world ! "  Nor  are  these  all. 
Septimius  Severus  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful Roman  emperors,  and  even  he  sighs  out,  "Omnia 
fui  et  nihil  expedit ! " 

These  are  what  are  called  the  lessons  of  history;  and 
Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  SegJu  d,  Em  juror  of  Ethiopia,  and  his 
Rasselas,  Prince  of  Abyssinia,  drives  them  well  home.  Hut 
it  seems  to  me  that  if  these  mighty  sovereigns  had  been 
content  with  health,  and  not  perpetually  longed  for  honey, 
"  the  mere  sweetness  in  the  mouth  " — if  they  had  counted 
the  days  in  which  they  were  absorbed  in  human  action, 
which  is  alone  The  Good,  they  might  have  found  their 
"  fourteen  days"  sufficient  to  eke  out  the  full  sum  of  their 
miseries.  I,  for  my  part,  when  tired  of  all  these  tears  and 
groans,  and  this  litany  of  woes,  am  apt  to  cry.  Let  me  get  out 
of  this  eternal  whine,  which,  the  brave  Wordsworth  tells 
us — 

"  Erebus  disdains ; 
Calm  pleasures  there  abide— majestic  pains!" 

Gibbon  is  honest  enough,  in  the  end,  to  speak  in  this  same 

sense.     "  If  I  may  speak  of  myself."  he  owns,  "  mij  happy 


276  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

hours  have  far  exceeded,  and  far  exceed,  the  scanty  numbers 
of  the  caliph  of  Spain."     And  even  Hume,  in  the  person 
of   Cleanthes,  who  certainly  speaks  then  as   Hume  the 
man,  is  obliged   to  say,  "  I   can   observe  something  like 
what  you  mention  of  misery  in  some  others ;  but,  I  con- 
fess, I   feel  little  or  nothing  of  it  in   myself,  and  hope 
that  it  is  not  so  common  as  you  represent  it,"     And  it 
is  not  so  common  !     The  misery  that  is,  is  largely  on  the 
part  of  people  who  have  nothing  to  do.      He  who  has 
work  mostly  never  whines  ;  though  I   admit   that  some- 
times Thomas  Carlyle  unduly  whines  over  his.      Consider 
the  population  as  a  whole  !      Surely  the  bulk  of  it  cannot 
be  called   unhappy  !     The  carpenter,  the  joiner,  or  other 
such  under  his   paper  cap,  his  feet  in  dry  shavings,  a 
roof  overhead,  and  his  body  warm,  spends  the  day  to  the 
whistle  of  his  plane  and  the  jokes  of  his  comrades.      The 
shoemakers,   how   they   prattle    in   a   semicircle    to   the 
tap-tap  of  their   hammers,  as   the   tailors   on  their  shop 
boards  to  the  snore  of  their  needles  !     If   you    walk   out 
some  country  road,  say  at  four  o'clock  of  the  dawn,  you 
will  find  the  weaver  in  his  village,  pipe  in  cheek,  pacing 
cheerfully  before  his  door,  and  snuffing  up  the  morning 
air  with  uncommon  satisfaction.      Just  so,  and  so  early, 
in  a  street  at  Paris,  I   have  seen  the  chiffonier,  chief  of 
the  proletariate,  him,  too,  with  his  pipe  in  the  morning  air, 
quite  gaily   whip  up,  with   his  hook,  over  his  shoulder, 
into'the  basket  on  his  back,  some  rag  from  the  dust-heap 
before  him.     At  their  work  they  are  all  quite  cheerful — 
workman  of  the  proletariate  or  workman  of  the  trade. 
What  a  strong,  healthy   fellow  is   the  navigator  on  the 
line,    picking    with    pick,    or    shovelling    with     shovel, 
always  effectively,    but   always,  too,   with    a    stroke    so 
tempered  and  temperate,  that  it  never  moves  a  pulse ! 
There  are  spells  of  danger  and  difficulty  to  some ;  but  if 
a  man  in  a  state  of  nature  is  a  hunter  or  fisher,  and  so 


THE  TRADES COMPARISON".  277 

as  it  were,  at  play,  most  of  the  employments  of  the 
population  have  still  the  interest  of  nature  in  them,  and 
many  of  them  its  romance.  It  does  not  belong  to  riches, 
nor  to  honours,  nor  to  titles  to  give  happiness.  Happiness 
is  in  the  mind;  ami  it  will  come  more  readily  into  the 
mind  of  a  rag-picker  than  into  the  mind  of  a  lord  at 
a  horse  race.  Happiness,  at  least  the  possibility  of 
happiness,  so  far  as  it  depends  on  the  mind,  is,  there 
may  be  reason  to  think,  not  so  unequally  meted  to  tin- 
most  part  of  mankind,  and  for  the  most  part  of  their 
lives.  People  are  apt  to  mistake  what,  in  regard  to 
happiness,  another  can  do  for  us.  "  She's  gi'en  me  meat. 
she's  gi'en  me  claes,"  says  the  "  young  thing''  in  the  song  ; 
and  that  is  about  the  total  or  the  staple,  the  main  and 
marrow,  of  what  can  be  done  for  us  from  the  outside  by 
anybody.  If  any  of  us  will  look  to  the  substance  of  our 
lives,  we  shall  find  that  that  staple  contains  all  the  realities 
and  strict  matters  of  fact  either  possible  or  necessary  for 
our  existence  here.  Whatever  drawback  may  appear, 
we  shall  find  that  it  comes  from  our  own  trick  of  com- 
parison. If  we  would  only  look  to  ourselves  and  our 
own  means  of  enjoyment,  we  would  be  contented  enough  ; 
but,  unfortunately,  we  must  look  to  others ;  and  that  is 
the  shadow  that  falls  for  us  with  a  blight  on  all  we 
have,  let  it  be  in  itself  what  bounty  soever.  T  have 
been  accustomed  to  think  that  a  capable  handicraftsman 
who  comes  home  of  an  evening,  pleased  with  his  day's 
work,  to  a  tidy  wife  and  tidy  children,  and  a  cosy  meal. 
by  a  cosy  tire,  in  his  room  and  kitchen,  or  two  rooms  and 
kitchen,  with  a  chest  of  drawers  and  an  eight-day  clock, 
and  a  book  to  read,  need  not  envy  any  prince  in  the 
land,  and  still  less  any  lord  at  a  racecourse, — were  il  not 
for  comparison.  Nature  is  there  read}'  at  any  moment 
to  spread  all  her  beauty  before  his  eyes,  all  her  wealth  of 
hill,  ami   dale,  and  champaign.      There    is    music    in   the 


278  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

air ;  there  is  glory  in  the  heavens  ;  and  every  tiniest 
shell  upon  the  shore  has  its  own  charm  of  a  loveliness 
of  form  that  was  never  due  to  sexual  selection.  Of 
course,  I  do  not  deny  that  sex  enters  in  some  way 
there  too ;  but  I  am  quite  sure  that  never  mollusc 
female  loved  mollusc  male,  or  mollusc  male,  mollusc 
female,  for  the  beauty  of  his  or  her  shell,  in  the 
same  way  as  a  woman  may  fall  in  love  with  a  man 
for  the  beauty  of  his  coat,  or  he  with  her  for  the 
beauty  of  her  habit.  I  suppose  it  never  occurred  to 
Mr.  Darwin  that  the  tailor  might  have  something  to 
do  with  sexual  selection,  at  least  so  far  as  some 
anthropoids  are  concerned ! 

So  it  is  on  the  whole,  then,  with  the  question  of  evil 
in  the  world.  In  short,  let  Hume  harangue  as  he  may, 
in  his  Parts  X.  and  XL  of  these  Dialogues,  piling  pain 
upon  pain,  and  black  upon  black,  human  life  remains  for 
all  that,  even  to  the  individual,  a  possession  that  pleases. 
Human  life,  of  course,  is  but  another  name  for  work ; 
but  that  is  not  a  fault ;  that  is  rather  a  laud ;  for  the 
subject  has  the  right  of  satisfaction  in  his  work,  and, 
according  to  philosophy,  it  is  the  quality  of  the  universe 
to  realize  no  less. 

Then  as  regards  the  complaints  or  objections  about 
design  itself,  several  of  which  it  has  been  enough  only  to 
exhibit,  it  really  does  not  appear  in  the  end  that  Hume  in 
his  ninety  pages  of  the  Dialogues  has  added  any  strength  to 
the  argument  of  his  nine  pages  of  the  Essays.  That  argu- 
ment generally  rested  on  the  single  idea  that,  in  ascend- 
ing from  the  world  to  God,  we  have  no  right  to  descend 
from  God  to  the  world  with  more  than  we  took  up. 
The  inference  to  the  cause  lies  in  the  effect  alone ;  or 
the  argument  from  design  gives  the  cause  as  equal  to  the 
effect,  and  we  have  no  warrant  to  make  it  more.  Of  course, 
the  reply  is,  just  look   to    the    effect.     Can  such  effect 


IDENTITY.  279 

as  that,  the  universe  namely,  not  warrant  every 
supremacy  that  we  name  God?  But  what  dominates 
]  I  nine  are  his  own  peculiar  ideas — the  very  peculiar 
ideas  which  he  has  himself  come  to  in  regard  to  cause 
and  effect.  In  the  first  place,  Hume,  as  he  says  himself 
(  Burton,  i.  i>7),  "  never  asserted  so  absurd  a  proposition  as 
that  anything  might  arise  without  a  cause;"  still  he 
did  assert  that,  as  regards  any  insight  of  reason,  we  have 
no  warrant  for  connecting  the  effect  with  its  cause, 
but  our  habitual  experience  of  their  customary  eon- 
junction  ;  and  that,  consequently,  so  far  as  we  see, 
anything  may  be  the  cause  of  anything  ("the  falling 
of  a  pebble  may,  for  aught  we  know,  extinguish  the  sun, 
or  the  wish  of  a  man  control  the  planets  in  their  orbits  "). 
That,  no  doubt,  is  Hume's  contention  so  far  ;  for  these  are 
his  own  words.  In  the  second  place,  however,  Hume, 
in  his  reasoning  against  design,  simply  contradicts  him- 
self, and  unconsciously  implies  what  principle  of  con- 
nection really  exists  between  the  cause  and  its  effect. 
That  is,  he  will  allow  in  the  cause  which  we  infer,  only 
such  qualities  as  are  contained  in  the  effect.  Say  it  is 
x  we  find  in  the  effect,  then,  says  Hume,  it  is  just  that  x, 
and  no  more  than  that  x,  that  you  are  to  find  in  the  cause. 
It  is  really  very  odd ;  but  Hume  is  never  for  a  brief 
instant  aware  that  in  that  he  has  answered  his  own 
cardinal,  crucial,  and  climacteric  question.  The  immediate 
nexus,  the  express  bond,  the  very  tie,  which  he  challenged 
you,  and  me,  and  the  whole  world  to  produce,  he  actually 
at  that  very  moment  produces  himself,  holds  up  in  his 
hand  even,  openly  shows,  expressly  names,  and  emphati- 
cally insists  upon  !  That  tie  is  identity.  When  Hume 
will  allow  no  qualities  in  the  cause  but  those  that  are 
found  in  the  effect,  that  amounts  to  saying  the  x  that 
virtually  is  the  cause  is  the  same  x  that  virtually  is  the 
effect.     And  what  is  that  but  the  assertion  of  a  relation 


280  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

of  identity  between  the  cause  and  the  effect  ?  Now,  indeed, 
that  as  much  as  that  is  manifest,  explicit,  and  express,  you 
will  be  astonished  how  often  it  has  been  said — almost  in 
terms,  if  unconsciously — positively  by  every  philosophical 
writer  you  can  possibly  take  up.  Nevertheless,  so  far  as 
I  know,  it  was  only  first  consciously  said  in  Europe  by 
George  William  Frederick  Hegel,  and  first  consciously 
repeated  in  English,  and  for  the  first  time  of  all  as  con- 
sciously directed  to  the  problem  of  Hume,  in  the  little 
essay  named  As  Regards  Protoplasm.  And  I  suppose  we 
owe  it  all  only  to  the  Hindoos.  Hegel  was  well  acquainted 
with  the  writings  of  Colebrooke,  and  in  his  pages  he  found 
the  Hindoos  to  say  :  "  The  nature  of  cause  and  effect  is  the 
same :  "  "a  piece  of  cloth  does  not  essentially  differ  from 
the  yarn  of  which  it  is  wove ;  barley,  not  rice  or  peas, 
grows  out  of  barley-corns ;  rice  is  in  the  husk  before  it  is 
peeled  ;  milk  is  in  the  udder  before  it  is  drawn  ;  and  milk, 
not  water,  is  taken  to  make  curds,"  etc.  etc.  For  I  might 
quote  much  more  from  the  same  author  to  the  same 
effect.  And,  in  reality,  is  it  not  precisely  the  same  import 
when  Hume  says,  and  when  it  is  commonly  said,  like 
effects  prove  like  causes  ?  The  wonder  is  that  Hume,  in 
spite  of  this  natural  conviction,  existent  in  all  of  us,  of 
"a  more  real  and  intimate  connection  between  the  cause  and 
its  effect  than  habitual  sequence,"  to  use  the  words  of  Sir 
John  Herschel — the  wonder  is  that  Hume  brought  over 
so  many  to  his  way  of  thinking,  that  to  him  was  sport 
only.  Burton  in  his  Life  of  Hume  (i.  82),  as  late  as  1846, 
has  these  astounding  words  in  a  note  :  "  This  refers  to  the 
notion,  which  now  may  be  termed  obsolete,  at  least  in 
philosophy,  of  an  inherent  power  in  the  cause  to  produce 
the  effect ! "  There  is  no  power  in  the  cause  to  produce 
the  effect — there  was  no  power  in  God  to  create  the  world  ! 
Hume  could  be  consistent  in  his  theories,  whatever  his 
conviction.     Burton  himself  points  out  that  it  was  only 


BURTON,  STEWART,  SPINOZA,  EKDMANN.  281 

consistency  led  ITunie  to  "the  annihilation  of  the  notion 
of  power."  as  well  in  the   immaterial  as  in  the  material 
world  (i.  275).     "As  we  cannot   find  in  physical  causes 
any  power  to  produce  their  effect,  so  when  a  man  moves 
his  arm  to  strike,  we  have  no  notion  of  any  power  being 
exercised!"       There    is    such   a    thing    as    compression, 
surely:  and  it  is  a  force,  a  power:  if  we  compress  a  full 
sponge  we  drive  the  water    out ;  and    this   compression 
involves  in  the  body  compressing,  here  the  hand,  a  certain 
strain  or  stress,  which  we  feel,  and   which,  eonsecpuently, 
we  indentify  with  power.      Prick  a  blown  bladder,  and 
the  fluent  air,  under  pressure  of  the  elastic  membrane 
(as  of  a  hand),  escapes.      There  is  a  rationale  in  the  whole 
process.      Surely  there  is  a  reason  why  a  garter  supports 
a  stocking,  or  a  button  fastens  a  coat!     To  say   that    the 
hammer  that  knocks  a  nail  in  to  the  head  can  lie  reasonably 
regarded,  not  as  a  force,  but  only  as  an  antecedent !      It  is 
really  wonderful  how  Brown,  and  so  many  others,  could 
accommodate  themselves  to  such  extravagant  ideas.     Why, 
even  Dugald  Stewart,  despite  his  master    Reid,  must  go 
over  to  Hume,  and  very  glaringly  stultify  himself.     Burton 
epiotes  (89)  him  to  the  effect  that  Hume's  theory  "lays 
the  axe  to  the  very  root  from  which  Spinozism  springs," 
and  this  because  "  physical  causes  and  effects  are  known  to 
us  merely  as  antecedents  and  consequents"  and  "  the   word 
necessity  is  altogether  unmeaning."     Stewart  thus  intimates 
that  Spinoza's  system  is,  as    he    says  further,  "  nothing- 
better  than  a  rope  of  sand,"andfor  the  single  reason  that  it  is 
founded  on  the  necessity  of  cause  and  effect.     Now-a-days, 
in  the  words  of  Erdmann  (ii.  49),  the  opinion  of  philosophy 
is,  that  Spinoza  "knows  not  any  actual  causal  connection, 
but  only  conditionedness  in  consequence  of  a  Vbrbegriff,"  a 
pre-notion  ;  and  surely  that  is  absolutely  Hume  on  both  of 
his  sides,  at  once  as   negative  of  causal   power  and  as 
affirmative,  instead  of  the  relation  only  of  antecedent  and 


282  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

consequent.  Dugald  Stewart  has  not  been  quite  happy 
here.  And,  in  general,  it  was  sufficiently  simple  on  his 
part,  after  all  that  Reid  had  said,  seriously  to  adopt,  almost 
as  a  philosophical  truism,  what  Hume  himself,  who  pro- 
posed it,  had  really  only  sceptically  played  with,  certainly 
at  last,  and  for  little  else  than  the  sceptical  conclusion 
that, viewing  our  limited  faculties  in  that  and  other  respects, 
it  is  in  vain  to  expect  "  ever  to  satisfy  ourselves  concerning 
any  determinations  which  we  may  form  with  regard  to  the 
origin  of  worlds,  and  the  situation  of  nature  from  and  to 
eternity  "  {Enquiry,  xii.,  iii.).  It  was  on  the  eve  of  his 
death,  and  in  allusion  to  his  own  health,  that  Hume  himself 
said,  "  A  wind,  though  it  extinguishes  a  candle,  blows  up  a 
fire  ; "  and  that  contains  the  whole  case.  So  much  power 
has  this  effect:  so  much  more,  that.  It  is  decidedly  in 
contradiction  of  his  own  propos  that  "  anything  may  be  the 
cause  or  the  effect  of  anything,"  that  Hume,  against 
design,  asserts  it  as  a  fact  that  thought  follows  matter,  but 
not  matter  thought :  "  we  see  every  day,"  he  says,  "  the 
latter  arise  from  the  former,  never  the  former  from  the 
latter ; "  "  ideas  are  copied  from  real  objects,  and  are 
ectypal,  not  archetypal."  That  is  a  vast  matter  that  is 
involved,  a  question  of  questions,  and  goes  far  beyond 
the  ideas  of  Hume.  In  the  meantime,  we  may  be  reminded 
of  Erigena's  ruling,  that  it  is  the  notion  that  is  the  original 
of  things,  and  not  things  of  the  notion.  Of  course  that  is 
not  the  doctrine  we  are  accustomed  to  of  late.  What  we 
hear  now,  rather,  is  much  rotund  oratory  about  the  physical 
basis,  that  there  is  an  original  matter.  Well,  perhaps  there 
is,  though  I  cannot  say  it  has  ever  been  held  up  to  me  or 
anybody  else.  But  this  I  can  say,  that,  hold  up  an  original 
matter  when  you  may,  you  will  never  hold  it  up  without 
an  original  form ;  which  original  form,  too,  is  the  original 
first  and  furrow  of  the  whole  business.  I  get  it  from 
liabelais  even  that,  forma  mutata,  mutatur  substantia,  the 


IIIME  IN  CONCLUSION.  283 

substance  itself  is  dependent  on  its  form.  It  is  the  form, 
namely,  and  not  the  matter,  that  is  the  valuable  clement. 
Why,  we  know  that  even  land,  which,  surely.  Ls  material 
enough,  has  its  value  in  it&form,  the  form  which  the  hand 
of  labour  has  impressed  upon  it.  At  all  events,  we  are 
evidently  under  no  necessity  to  conclude  with  Hume  or 
his  belated  followers,  that  matter  is,  in  any  respect,  earlier 
than  form.  But,  in  fact,  as  is  customary  with  Hume,  it 
would  seem  in  the  end  that  he  has  been  only  at  play. 
The  very  Fhilo  in  the  I  Halogues  wlm  makes  all  the  sceptical 
objections,  comes  out  at  last  with  such  an  acknowledgment 
as  this :  "  The  beauty  and  fitness  of  final  causes  strike  us 
with  such  irresistible  force  that  all  objections  appear 
(what  I  believe  they  really  are)  mere  cavils  and  sophisms 
.  .  .  the  Atheist,  I  assert,  is  only  nominally  so,  and  can 
never  possibly  be  in  earnest."  And  Cleanthes  had  already 
said  before  him :  "  The  order  and  arrangement  of  nature, 
the  curious  adjustment  of  final  causes,  the  plain  use  and 
intention  of  every  part  and  organ, — all  these  bespeak  in 
the  clearest  language  an  intelligent  cause  or  author. 
The  heavens  and  the  earth  join  in  the  same  testimony : 
the  whole  chorus  of  nature  raises  one  hymn  to  the  praises 
of  its  Creator."  Would  you  not  say  here  that  David  had 
suddenly  grown  poetic  ?  Even  speaking  in  his  own  name 
and  character,  he  is  quite  as  explicit,  and  not  much  less 
eloquent  "  The  whole  frame  of  nature,"  he  says  in  his 
Nat.  Hist,  of  Beligion,  "  bespeaks  an  intelligent  author — 
one  single  being  who  bestowed  existence  and  order  on  this 
vast  machine,  and  adjusted  all  its  parts,  according  to  one 
regular  plan  or  connected  system."  "  Look  out  for  a 
people  entirely  void  of  religion,"  he  concludes,  and  "  if  you 
find  them  at  all,  be  assured  that  they  are  but  few  degrees 
removed  from  brutes  !  " 

In  fact,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  only  super- 
stition Hume  hated,  and  nut  religion  :   "  You.  ( 'leauthes,  are 


284  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FOURTEENTH. 

sensible  that,  notwithstanding  the  freedom  of  my  conver- 
sation, and  my  love  of  singular  arguments,  no  one  has  a 
deeper  sense  of  religion  impressed  on  his  mind."  And 
when  this  is  said  for  Philo,  it  is  said  for  Hume  himself. 
His  reverence  of  true  religion,  indeed,  he  has  not  been 
slow,  again  and  again  in  his  own  person,  to  express.  There 
was  nothing  covert  in  the  man :  much  obloquy  he  might 
easily  have  escaped  by  simple  silence,  or  by  speech  more 
guarded ;  but  he  was  a  big  man,  and  he  spoke  free  :  he 
scorned  to  be  seen  of  men  otherwise  than  with  face  to  the 
front.  He  was  loyal  in  his  nature,  generous.  Almost  as 
much  as  in  his  own,  he  rejoiced  in  the  fame  that  competed 
with  it.  Letters  were  his  only  weakness.  "When  he 
ought  to  have  been  "  poring  over  Voet  and  Vinnius,  Cicero 
and  Virgil  were  the  authors  he  was  secretly  devouring." 
He  was  still  a  boy  when  he  wrote,  "  I  could  not  quit  my 
pretensions  in  learning  but  with  my  last  breath."  It  is  a 
satisfaction  to  know  that,  naturally,  such  zeal  and  devotion 
cannot  be  without  their  reward.  Hume  is  a  peer  only  to 
the  highest  of  his  people,  to  Scott,  and  Burns,  and  Carlyle. 
His  best  works  will  endure.  For  perspicuity  and  ease  of 
How,  his  history  is  as  yet  unsurpassed  in  the  language. 
Its  "  careless,  inimitable  beauties  of  style  "  made  Gibbon, 
when  he  read,  lay  down  the  book  in  despair.  One  cannot 
but  hope  that  its  author,  wherever  he  is,  has  the  satisfac- 
tion of  reflecting  that  not  a  single  Scoticism  more  remains 
for  the  weeding.  Though  so  eager  to  be  an  Englishman 
in  his  writing,  what  a  Scot  of  the  Scots  he  was  in  his  speech, 
looks,  person,  and  the  pride  of  his  heart !  He  was  simply 
so  common  Scotch,  indeed,  that,  when  the  servant  girl 
breathlessly  broke  in  upon  him  to  say,  Somebody  had 
chalked  St.  David  Street  upon  his  house,  he  could  only 
ejaculate,  "Never  mind,  lassie,  many  a  better  man  has  been 
made  a  saint  of  before  !  "  And  if  we  cannot  discover  much 
point  in  the  phrase,  we  can  all  recognise  how  like  it  is  to 


bume's  house.  285 

the  great,  stout,  simple  sort  of  Dandy  Dinmont  Scotchman 

that  he  was:  And  I  hope  now  you  will  go  and  look  at 
that  house,  the  old-fashioned  one  at  the  corner  of  St. 
Andrew  Square,  that,  in  St.  David  Street,  stood  alone  at 
first.  Hume  himself  had  it  built,  and  he  lived  in  it  the 
last  five  or  six  veins  of  his  life.  Go  and  look  at  it,  and, 
as  you  look,  believe  that,  whatever  his  shortcomings  and 
deficiencies,  it  is  still  with  love,  and  respect,  and  gratitude 
that  we  ought  to  think  always  and  at  any  time  of  the 
"  good  David." 


GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

Transition,  Hume  to  Kant — Effect  of  Kant  on  natural  theology— 
The  centre  of  Kant's  thought — Hume  led  to  this— Causal 
necessity — That  necessity  objective — Still  in  matters  of  fact — 
Relations  of  ideas — Hume  on  one  side,  Kant  on  the  other,  of 
the  dilemma — Hume  quite  as  Reid,  on  natural  necessity — 
But  what  the  explanation  to  intellectual  insight  —  Synthetic 
addition — Analytic  implication — Change — Kant's  explanation 
is,  There  are  a  priori  syntheses  native  to  the  mind — The  whole 
Kantian  machinery  in  a  sentence — Time  and  space — The  twelve 
categories  and  the  three  ideas  —  A  toy  house  —  A  peculiar 
magic  lantern — A  psychology — A  meta physic— Analysis  of 
the  syllogism  for  the  ideas — Simple  apprehension  missed — An 
idea — The  ideal — The  teleological  proof. 

There  can  be  no  straighter  or  nearer  transition  than 
from  David  Hume  to  Immanuel  Kant.  The  latter  does 
himself  claim  the  former  as  his  direct  and  immediate 
predecessor.  This  is  true,  too,  not  only  in  the  reference, 
generally,  to  philosophy,  but  in  that,  particularly,  to  the 
special  subject  presently  before  us.  Perhaps  not  in 
English,  but  certainly  in  translations,  Kant  (very 
evidently)  is  perfectly  familiar  with  Hume's  main  doc- 
trines in  regard  to  the  existence  of  a  God ;  nor  do  his 
own  results  differ  much  from  those  of  his  forerunner, 
otherwise  than  in  weight  and  authority.  It  was  princi- 
pally because  of  these  results,  namely,  that  the  Allcszer- 
malmender,  the  everything  -  to  -  pieces  -  pounding  Kant, 
received  his  title.  Kant's  countrymen,  unlike  their 
neighbours,  the  French,  are  not  reputed  to  be  parti- 
cularly versatile  ;  nevertheless  it  seems  certain  that,  not 


THE  CENTRE  OF  KANT'S  THOUGHT.        287 

long  after  reading  his  three  chapters  on  the  impossibility 
of  each  of  the  three  proofs  for  the  existence  of  God, 
must  of  them  who  were  at  least  of  the  same  guild  with 
Kant,  suddenly  ceased,  or  were  even  ashamed,  to  mention 
the  subject.  Fur  them  the  whole  science  of  Natural 
Theology  had,  in  a  moment,  passed  silently  into  the 
limbo  of  the  lost.  And  so  it  is  that  it  is  of  greater 
importance  for  us  to  put  to  scrutiny  the  relative  views 
of  Kant  than  even  those  of  Hume.  At  all  to  effect  this 
with  any  satisfaction,  however,  requires  that  we  should 
preliminarily  know  at  least  the  spirit  of  the  system  from 
which  these  views  naturally  take  origin.  That  may 
sound  ominous  ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  what  is  con- 
cerned may  not  be  put  simply  and  intelligibly  enough. 

The  centre  of  Kant  is,  to  say  so,  the  a  -priori — 
those  elements  of  knowledge,  those  elements  of  the 
ordinary  perception  of  things,  that  are  native  and  proper 
to  the  mind  itself,  even  before,  or  independently  and  in 
anticipation  of,  any  actual  experience  of  these  things. 
That  is  what  is  meant  by  pure  reason.  Our  minds  shall 
be  at  birth,  not,  as  with  Locke,  so  many  tabulae  rasae,  so 
many  mere  blank  sheets  for  things  to  write  themselves 
into,  so  many  empty  bags  or  sacks  for  things  to  occupy  ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  they  shall  be,  already,  beforehand, 
rich  quarries,  filled,  as  it  were,  with  the  needful  handles 
and  cues  of  all  things.  What  led  Kant  to  this  was 
Hume.  Hume,  as  we  know,  took  the  cause  as  one  thing 
and  the  effect  as  another;  and  holding  them  out  so, 
apart,  challenged  any  man  to  show  any  principle  of 
union  between  them.  Without  experience  of  the  fact, 
it  is  impossible  to  tell  that  gunpowder  will  explode,  or 
a  loadstone  attract.  Consequently  it  is  only  by  the 
custom  of  experience  that  we  know  the  effeel  of  the  one 
on  iron,  or  the  consequence  on  the  other  of  a  spark. 
Kant  was  deeply  impressed  by  such  examples  and  the 


288  CIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

general  challenge  of  Hume.  He  admits  himself  that  he 
brooded  over  the  problem  concerned  for  "  at  least  twelve 
years;"  and  of  that  brooding  I  think  it  is  possible  to 
detect  traces  as  early  as  the  year  1766,  or  fifteen  years 
before  the  publication  of  his  Kritik  of  Pure  Reason. 
What,  in  the  end,  prevented  Kant  from  agreeing  with 
Hume  in  his  rationale  custom,  was  perception  of  the 
nature  of  the  necessity  which  was  involved  in  the 
problem.  That  necessity  Kant  saw  was  not  a  subjective, 
but  an  objective  necessity.  The  necessity  by  which, 
when  I  think  A,  I  cannot  help  thinking  also  B,  C,  D  ; 
or  when  I  think  1,  then  also  2,  3,  4 — that  necessity,  as 
being  only  one  of  habitual  association  in  me,  is  a  sub- 
jective necessity.  But,  when  I  think  of  an  eclipse  of 
the  sun  as  following  the  intervention  of  the  moon,  I  do 
not  think  of  a  necessity  subjective,  a  necessity  for  no 
other  reason  than  habitual  association  of  my  own.  On 
the  contrary,  I  think  of  a  necessity  objective,  of  a 
necessity  that  exists  independently  of  me,  and  without 
any  reference  to  me  or  my  feelings  in  any  way.  In 
short,  I  know  that  the  moon,  coming  between  me  and 
the  light,  casts  its  shadow  upon  me,  and  must  cast  its 
shadow  upon  me ;  which  is  an  event  and  an  entire 
resultant  necessity,  utterly  independent  of  me,  and  of 
any  way  in  which  I  may  be  pleased  to  regard  it.  In 
the  same  way,  when  I  see  a  bridge  overthrown  by  a 
river  in  flood,  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  think  the 
necessity  involved  to  proceed  from  custom — to  depend 
on  the  influence  of  custom.  I  cannot  think  that  neces- 
sity a  subjective  necessity  in  me,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
an  objective  necessity  in  the  facts  themselves.  This, 
then,  is  what  occurred  to  Kant  in  face  of  the  contention 
of  Hume.  But  then  he  was  obliged  to  admit  at  the 
same  time  that  Hume  was  right  in  pointing  out  that  all 
examples  of  causality  were  but  matters  of  fact,  in  regard 


HUME  LED  TO  THIS.  289 

to  which,  as  matters  of  fact,  we  know  that  they  are,  or 
are  as  they  are,  but  not  that  they  must  be.  Cork  floats, 
coal  burns,  etc.  etc. ;  we  know  the  fact  or  the  event ; 
but  we  did  not  know  the  fact  or  the  event  in  any  case 
until  we  tried  it;  then  and  then  only  we  knew  that  the 
propositions,  cork  floats,  coal  burns,  were  true  :  but  we 
did  not  know,  and  we  know  not  now,  that  they  must  be 
true.  Cork  might  not  float,  coal  mighl  not  burn:  we 
see  no  necessity  for  cork  to  float  or  for  coal  to  burn. 
But  all  examples  of  causality  are  just  such  facts  as  the 
matters  of  fact  that  cork  floats  or  coal  burns  ;  and  yet 
the  proposition  concerned  in  every  one  single  example  of 
causality  is  as  necessary,  as  apodictically  necessary,  as 
any  proposition  dependent  on  what  are  called  relations 
of  ideas,  and  which,  accordingly,  is  intuitively  known  to 
carry  or  involve  the  necessity  in  question.  It  was  pre- 
cisely this  peculiarity  that  struck  both  Hume  and  Kant. 
Doth  saw  that  all  examples  of  causality  were  only  known 
by  experience ;  and  both  saw  that  they  all  brought  with 
them  a  suggestion  of  necessity.  Both,  then,  further, 
immediately  asked  how  was  this  ?  for  both  knew  that  ex- 
perience was  only  competent  to  say  this  thing  or  that  thing 
is  so,  not  this  thing  or  that  thing  must  be  so.  But  both, 
putting  the  same  question,  in  the  same  circumstances,  and 
with  the  same  knowledge,  came  to  an  answer,  each,  which 
was  the  contradictory  of  the  other.  Hume  said,  As  it  is  an 
affair  of  experience  alone,  it  can  be  no  affair  of  necessity. 
( )n  the  contrary,  said  Kant,  As  it  is  an  affair  of  necessity, 
it  can  be  no  affair  of  experience  alone.  Hume  had  no 
objection  whatever  to  the  necessity  in  question  being 
regarded  by  us  as  a  natural  necessity.  He  did  himself 
regard  it  as  a  natural  necessity.  Neither  did  he  object 
to  the  reference  of  it,  as  a  natural  necessity,  to  instinct. 
On  the  contrary,  as  a  natural  uecessity,  he  did  himself 
so  refer  it.     And  Reid,  consequently,  in  the  case,  might 

T 


290  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

have  profitably  spared  himself  much  gratuitous  excitement. 
All  that  Hume  insisted  on  was  that,  putting  aside  instinct 
and  asking  for  an  explanation,  an  intelligible  reason,  of 
the  necessity  we  felt  in  the  inference  from  the  effect  to 
the  cause,  or  from  the  cause  to  the  effect,  he,  for  his  part, 
could  discover  or  detect  none  but  the  constant  previous 
conjunction,  nevertheless,  that  he  was  c^uite  open  to  the 
better  explanation  and  the  better  reason  which  another 
man,  abler  than  himself,  or  more  fortunate  than  himself, 
might  have  succeeded  to  obtain.     That  for  Hume  is  his 
whole  relative  position ;  and  that  for  Hume  is  the  whole 
relative  position  that  remained  the  same  till  the  end  of 
his    life.      Not,   indeed,    till   some    five   years   after    the 
death  of  Hume  was  there  heard  in  reply  to  his  challenge 
the  answer   of   Kant.      That   answer,  as  we   have   seen 
(Hume,  of  the  two  elements  concerned,  having  chosen 
experience  for  his  fulcrum  of  support),  took  up  its  position 
ex  adverse-  on  the  ground  left  to  it  of  necessity ;  where 
the  first  movement  of  Kant  was  to  point  to  this  necessity 
as  objective,  not  subjective,  and  withal  as  in  its  matter 
synthetic    and    not    analytic.      When    you    say,    Every 
change  has  its  cause,  you  feel  that  you  say  something 
that  is  as  absolutely  and  necessarily  true  as  when  you 
say  that  a  straight  line  between  any  two  points  is  the 
shortest   line.     You   feel   also    that   you   say  something 
that  is  true,  not  for  the  same  reason  that  it  is  true  that 
All  windows  let  in  light,  or  that  all  peninsulas  are  almost 
islands.      It  is  the  very  meaning  of  a  window  that  it  lets 
in  light,  and  it  is  the  very  meaning  of  a  peninsula  that 
it  is  almost  an  island.     These  last  are  analytic  propositions, 
for  what  you  allege  of  the  notion,  the  window,  or  the 
peninsula,  is  involved  in  the  very  notion  itself — in  what 
it  directly  means,  namely.      But  the  notion  cause  is  not 
in    the   same   way  involved   in   the   notion   change.     A 
change  has  a  cause  ;  but  a  change  is  something  on  its 


HUME  AND  KANT  HERE.  291 

own  account,  and  does  not  mean  a  cause  in  the  same 
way  that  a  window  means  admission  of  light  or  a  penin- 
sula approach  to  an  island.  The  proposition  of  change, 
therefore,  is  no  mere  analytic  or  tautological  proposition  ; 
and  its  truth,  while  as  certain  as  that  of  any  such,  is  as 
certain  also  as  the  truth  of  any  non  -  tautological  or 
synthetic  proposition,  an  example  of  which  was  the  truth 
that,  between  any  two  points  the  straight  line  is  the 
shortest.  Straight  is  not  short ;  a  straight  line  may  be 
anything  but  short.  The  two  tilings  are  perfectly  dif- 
ferent; nevertheless  the  proposition  brings  them  together 
into  a  certain  identity.  So  two  angles  called  right  are 
not  the  same  as  the  three  angles  of  any  triangle ;  just  as 
the  two  squares  on  the  two  sides  are  not  the  square  on 
the  third  side  of  a  certain  triangle,  and  the  parallelism 
of  two  lines  is  not  their  continuation  into  infinity. 
Nevertheless,  the  two  notions  respectively  concerned  in 
these  three  examples  can  be  brought,  however  different 
they  are  each  by  itself,  into  a  certain  common  identity. 
That  now  is  the  case  with  the  proposition  of  causality. 
That  every  effect,  or  change,  has  its  cause.  The  change 
is  not  the  cause,  and  the  cause  is  not  the  change.  I 
may  show  you  a  lobster  black,  and,  leaving  the  room, 
may  return  with  it  red.  You  see  the  change,  then — a 
thing  quite  by  itself;  but,  even  if  there  be  a  cause,  as 
you  will  certainly  surmise,  you  do  not  yet  know  it.  I 
may  have  plunged  the  lobster  in  a  bath  of  acids,  or  1 
may  have  boiled  it,  or  I  may  have  done  some  quite  other 
unknown  something  to  it.  In  a  word,  the  change  is  one 
thing  and  the  cause  another,  and  to  bring  them  together 
into  a  relation  of  identity  is  an  act  of  synthesis,  an  act 
thai  involves  a  synthetic  process  or  a  synthetic  pro- 
position. 

Here    now,    then,    we    stand    before    Kant's    problem. 
We   may  even   assume   Hume  himself  to  be  present,  and 


292  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

to  admit  now  that  his  answer  was  no  answer  to  the 
necessity  concerned,  and  that  he  is  eager  to  hear  Kant's 
answer. 

Well,  says  Kant,  I  have  got  to  find  the  source  of  a 
necessary  truth  that  is  not  analytic,  but  synthetic,  and 
that  at  the  same  time  is  not  due  to  experience.  What 
not  due  to  experience  means  has  been  already  explained. 
There  is  no  particular  causation,  no  particular  example 
of  causality  that  is  not  due  to  experience.  The  indenta- 
tion of  a  cushion  by  a  bullet  is  an  example  of  causality, 
but  it  is  known  only  by  experience.  So  it  is  with  all 
other  examples,  as  the  drifting  of  a  ship  in  a  stream,  or 
the  warming  of  a  stone  by  the  sun.  All  such  things  are 
just  seen ;  they  are  facts  of  experience — they  are  affairs 
of  perception.  Nay,  the  universal  of  causality,  the 
universal  proposition  of  causality,  does  itself  involve  eye- 
sight, does  itself  involve  experience,  does  itself  involve 
perception.  Every  change  has  its  cause  :  it  is  impossible 
that  we  should  have  any  knowledge  of  what  a  change  is, 
unless  we  had  experience  of  it.  There  are  certainly 
intellectual  changes,  changes  in  the  process  of  the  under- 
standing, changes  in  the  process  of  reason,  changes  in 
belief,  etc. ;  but  any  change,  even  any  such  change,  is 
always  known  to  us  as  an  alteration,  substantially,  of 
consciousness,  and  an  alteration  of  consciousness  is  just 
another  word  for  experience.  We  can  have  an  experience 
only  when  we  have  an  alteration  of  consciousness  :  an 
experience  is  that — an  alteration  of  consciousness.  Even 
the  universal  of  causation,  then,  every  change  has  its 
cause,  is  a  proposition  that  involves  experience,  is  a 
proposition  a  posteriori — at  least  so  far.  But  so  far  only. 
Otherwise,  it  is,  in  its  vital  force  and  virtue,  a  proposition 
a  priori.  That  is  the  contention  of  Kant.  A  change  must 
have  a  cause.  This  is  a  truth  which,  though  synthetic, 
is    also    apodictic  —  necessary    and    universal    namely. 


THE  QUESTION  FOR  KANT.  293 

But,  says  Kant,  necessity  and  universality  are  "  sure 
criteria  of  a  priori  cognition."  The  proposition  of 
causality,  therefore,  must  be,  as  said,  at  least  in  its  virtue, 
of  an  apriori  place.  The  synthesis  it  implies,  the  synthesis 
of  the  two  notions,  of  change  on  the  one  hand  and  of 
cause  on  the  other,  is  not  a  result  of  experience,  is  not  a 
result  a  posteriori  ;  for,  in  that  case,  the  truth  of  it  would 
not  be  apodictic,  would  not  be  universal  and  necessary, 
but  a  truth  only  as  for  the  moment  funnel, — a  truth  only 
probable,  then,  and  a  mere  matter  of  fact. 

The  question  for  Kant,  now,  then,  plainly  is — How  is 
this  ?  How  can  the  causal  proposition  be  possibly 
a  priori  ?  How  can  its  validity  be  a  product  of  mind, 
and  wholly  independent  of  any  experience  a  posteriori  '. 
It  was  this  single  question  that  led  Kant  in  the  end  to 
his  whole  cumbrous,  extraordinary,  and  incredible  system. 
Simply  to  explain  causality  by  innate  principles  of  reason, 
native  and  original  to  the  mind  itself,  Kant  invented  that 
whole  prodigious  machinery — merely  for  such  explana- 
tion, Kant  forced  into  the  geometrical  point  of  his  own 
consciousness  the  infinitude  of  space  and  the  infinitude  of 
time,  but  grasped,  throughout  their  whole  infinitude, 
together  both,  by  the  tree  of  the  categories,  the  enchanted 
and  enchanting  Yggdrasil,  whose  branches  reduced  the 
infinitude  in  which  they  spread  into  the  very  finite  net  of 
the  schematism  that  held  to  our  ears,  and  eyes,  and 
fingers,  nostrils,  and  palate  their  own  sensations  always. 
That  was  the  monstrous  birth  to  which  Kant  came  at 
last  after  his  fifteen  years'  sitting  on  the  simple  egg  of 
Hume.  And,  all  the  time,  we  may  fancy  our  Indian 
fellow-Aryans  laughing  at  them  both,  and  pointing,  as 
seen,  to  nothing  but  identity  ! 

That,  then,  was  the  course  of  Kant,  The  proposition 
of  causality  was  to  be  placed  within  us,  and  made  into 
a  principle  of  the  very  mind.     Strangely,  somehow,  the 


294  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

first  step  iii  this  operation  was  the  internalization  of 
space  and  time.  We  may  think,  if  we  like,  space  a 
boundless  vacancy  without  us,  and  time  a  mighty  throb 
which  is  ever  at  once  throughout  the  whole  of  the 
boundlessness ;  but  we  are  only  all  wrong — we  are  only 
the  victims  of  our  own  magical  privilege  and  miraculous 
endowment.  Newton  himself  might  see  "  the  floor  of 
heaven  thick-studded  with  patines  of  bright  gold,"  and, 
in  rapture  of  his  awe,  murmur  to  himself,  "  Since  every 
particle  of  space  is  ahvays,  and  every  indivisible  moment 
of  time  is  everyvihere,  assuredly  the  Fabricator  and  Lord 
of  all  things  will  not  be  never  and  nowhere;"  but  he, 
too,  would  only  deceive  himself  and  stray.  The  truth  is 
that  all  these  unfathomable  depths  and  illimitable 
spheres,  with  all  their  rich  contents,  are  not  without  at 
all,  are  not  in  a  heaven  at  all,  but  only  in  me.  That,  as 
I  say,  was  the  first  step  of  Kant.  Time  and  space  were 
only  forms  of  general  sense  really  within,  which  still,  at 
touch  upon  particular  (special)  sense,  were  thrown  as 
mirages  apparently  without.  Then  all  these  touches  of 
special  sense — sensations  namely — received  into  these 
mirages,  were  wrought  up  into  perceptions,  objects — the 
things  of  this  external  universe — and  associated  into  rule 
and  system  by  the  twelve  categories  and  the  three  ideas. 
To  arrive  at  such  results  as  these  was  a  work  of  a  long 
brooding — a  fabrication  of  multiform  piecing  on  the  part 
of  Kant.  There,  however,  in  the  end  it  is,  and  all  for  no 
other  purpose  than  to  demonstrate  that  the  necessity, 
which  we  all  feel  and  know  to  lie  in  the  connection  of 
the  cause  with  its  effect,  was  not,  as  Hume  mischievously 
argued,  subjective  and  a  posteriori,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
objective  and  a  priori.  To  effect  this,  time  and  space 
were  both  retracted  within  us,  and,  while  there,  were 
acted  upon  in  the  peculiar  succession  of  their  parts  by 
the  function  of  judgment,  named   antecedent  and  con- 


A  PECULIAR  MAGIC  LANTERN.  295 

sequent,  till  there  issued,  in  category  and  schema,  the 
full    formed    «   priori  machinery    of  cause    and   effect 
Fancy   it   all  —  it    is    like  a  toy-house,    which   children 
take  piecemeal  out  of  a  box,  and  put  together  in  play. 
There  are  first  the  two  1  > •  1 1  ^  and  broad  bits,  time  and 
space,    folded    together,    but     expansible,    at   once    an 
indivisible  centre  and  a  boundless  circumference.     These 
are    then    fitted    into    another     piece     which    is     called 
p  oductive  imagination—  productive,  as  so  contrived,  that 
is,  that,  motive  of  and  in  them,  it  can  expand  the  sort  of 
collapsed  wings,    the    long   and  broad   hits    of  time    and 
space,  at  the  same  time  that  it  receives  into  them  the 
sensations  which,  come  from  where  they  may,  gave  it  the 
hint.      But,  after  all,  our  toy  materials  do   not  seem,  on 
the  whole,  SO  very  well  adapted  tor  the   construction  of  a 
house.      Let  us  conceive  rather  that  we  put  them  together 
into  a  magic   lantern — a  peculiar,  a  very  peculiar   mi 
lantern     Well,  the  pieces  called  time  and  space  shall  be 
the  slides,  and    imagination   shall  be  the   containing  case 
of   the   lantern.      Xow,  to  complete   tin-    case,   with   the 
slides  in  it.  we  make   an   addition    from  within  to  its  top. 
And  the  piece   which  we   fix   there   is   the  most   curious 
piece  of  nil.      It  is  a  sort   of  cone — in   shape,  let  us  say, 
something    like    an    extinguisher,    hut    as    suited    to    a 
magic  lantern,  a   very  magical   extinguisher.      The   little 
round  top  of  the  extinguisher,  now  itself  at   top  of  the 
whole  case,  shall   he  the  reuniting  unity  and   unit,  as 
were,  of  the  entire  contrivance.      Fancy  it   the   light  - 
the    illuminating  light  of    the   whole   arrangement — or 

fancy  it  rather — this  little  round  top  the  eye  that 
into  the  whole  internality  of  the  machine, and, as  it  were. 
throws  its  lighl  down  into  it.  Well,  suppose  this 
extinguisher  in  place  as  the  lantern's  top:  the  eye,  that 
is  placed  there— a  mere  head— throws  its  -lance,  its 
light,    down     into    the    sensations,    the   figures    on    the 


296  GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

slides,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  receives  the  light 
from  them  up  into  itself — but  through  lenses.  Round  the 
circle  at  the  wide  end  of  the  extinguisher,  as  fixed  in 
place,  there  are  twelve  lenses ;  and  these  are  the 
categories  !  They  are  the  functions  of  judgment,  which  is 
the  hollow  of  the  extinguisher,  and  collects  and  con- 
centrates all  into  the  eye,  or  the  mere  bead  at  top. 
This  eye,  this  bead  at  top,  is  the  Pure,  Primary,  or 
Original  Apperception,  or,  as  it  is  otherwise  called,  the 
Synthetic  Unity  of  Apperception.  Now,  then,  that  is  the 
way  Kant  fancies  vis  to  perceive  this  universe — that  is 
the  Transcendental  Deduction  of  the  Categories.  Sen- 
sations, we  know  not  how,  but  feigned  to  be  due  to 
things  in  themselves, — which  things  in  themselves, 
whether  as  what,  or  as  where,  are  utterly  unknown  to  us, 
— sensations,  I  say,  so  due,  appear,  we  know  not  how, 
on  the  slides  of  time  and  space  in  the  material  of  the 
imagination ;  and,  carried  up  thence  by  judgment, 
through  its  twelve  lenses  of  the  categories,  into  the 
xinity  of  apperception,  into  the  unity  of  self-consciousness, 
suddenly  stand  around  us  infinite,  as  this  whole  huge 
formed,  ruled,  and  regulated  universe !  To  that  grand 
finale  and  consummation,  at  least,  Kant  only  adds  three 
toy  pieces  further.  They  are  what  he  calls  the  Ideas : 
the  Psychological  Idea,  the  Cosmological  Idea,  and  the 
Theological  Idea.  They  may  be  conceived — the  three 
ideas  may  be  conceived  as  three  lenses,  beyond  the 
twelve  categorical  lenses,  and  fitted  into  apperception,  the 
eye  (I),  or  bead  itself  at  top.  There  now,  that  is  the 
whole,  and  that  is  not,  after  all,  merely  a  deduction,  the 
transcendental  deduction — that  is  really  the  way  in 
which  Kant  creates — positively  makes  for  us  this  actual 
universe !  Kant,  to  construct  this  universe,  takes 
absolutely  nothing  from  the  universe,  but  all  from  him- 
self.    The  sensations  are  his,  the  imagination  is  his,  the 


A  PSYCHOLOGY.  29  , 

categories  are  his,  the  Ideas  are  his,  the  Apperception  is 
his — what  is  not  his  are  alone,  the  unknown  ghosts,  the 
Things-in-themselves ;  and  for  them  he  has  not  a  vestige 
of  a  warrant :  to  his  own  self  they  are,  by  his  own  self, 
admitted  and  declared  to  be  absolutely  unknown  ciphers, 
nonentities,  which  nowhere  exist,  or  which  exist,  as  idle 
suppositions,  only  in  name.  Nor  is  Kant  less  autocratic 
in  his  further  and  final  step  as  concerns  the  Liens — God, 
that  is,  and  our  own  soul,  are  only  ideas,  without  corre- 
spondent objects  or  with  correspondent  objects  only 
feigned — again  ciphers,  then  ! — Not  but  that,  in  a 
practical  point  of  view,  we  may  grant  them  to  be — 
what  ? — postulates  !  And  that  only  means  that,  as 
moral  beings,  we  are  under  a  necessity  to — suppose  them  ! 
In  the  prosecution  now  of  our  own  immediate  theme, 
it  is  to  these  three  Ideas  that  we  must  turn  at  last  for  a 
more  particular  relative  inquiry;  and,  in  the  first  place, 
we  are  to  understand  that  their  function  is  not  con- 
stitutive, but  only  regulative.  This  world,  as  we  have 
seen,  according  to  Kant,  is  only  an  affair  of  our  own 
subjective  affections,  and  our  own  subjective  actions.  Our 
own  categories,  acting  on  our  own  forms  of  space  and 
time,  and,  through  these,  on  our  own  sensations,  bring  all 
into  our  own  unity ;  and  all  so  far  is  constitutive.  It  is 
the  Ideas  now  come  in  as  regulative;  for  their  action  has 
no  part  in  the  formation  of  things.  To  the  formation  of 
things  there  go  only  the  sensations ;  the  spectra  of  space 
and  time  that  receive  the  sensations ;  and  the  categories 
which,  under  the  unity  of  apperception,  order,  arrange, 
condense,  and  work  up  the  sensations  into  the  perceived 
objects  of  the  perceived  world  in  time  and  space  around 
us.  All  these  materials,  then,  are  constitutive  :  and.  in 
discussing  them,  we  have  realised  a  Psychology,  a 
Philosophy  of  the  Mind,  an  Erkenntnisstheorie.  It  has 
been  left  for  the  Ideas,  especially  in  their  moral  reference, 


298  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

to  realize  a  Metaphysic,  the  interests  of  which  are  God, 
the  Soul,  and  the  Freedom  of  the  Will ;  but  all  here  is 
only  regulative.  If  the  categories  give  unity  to  things, 
the  Ideas,  on  their  side,  give  only  a  further  degree  of 
unity  to  the  categories  themselves,  and  are  of  no 
objective,  but  only  of  a  subjective  or  internal  application 
for  the  mind's  own  wants  of  order,  arrangement,  sim- 
plification, and  unity.  So  far  as  they  seem  to  effect  more 
than  that  indeed,  they  are  the  sources  of  a  necessary, 
natural,  and  unavoidable  illusion.  But  we  shall  under- 
stand better  what  Kant  means  by  that,  if  we  refer,  in  the 
first  place,  to  the  peculiar  means  and  method  by  which 
he  describes  himself  to  attain  to  these  ideas. 

It  was  by  a  fortunate  recollection  of  the  doctrine  of 
Judgment  in  ordinary  school  logic  that  Kant,  after  long 
meditation,  examination,  and  trial,  came  to  his  categories 
in  correspondence  with  the  subordinate  three  moments 
under  each  of  the  four  common  and  familiar  rubrics  of 
Quantity,  Quality,  Relation,  and  Modality.  It  was  only 
by  an  extension,  as  it  were,  of  this  hint,  that  Kant  passed 
from  the  section  of  the  Judgment  to  the  section  of 
the  Syllogism ;  and  from  its  three  forms,  Categorical, 
Hypothetical,  and  Disjunctive,  extricated,  at  least  to  his 
own  satisfaction,  the  three  Ideas.  The  three  parts  of 
Logic,  as  wTe  know,  are  Simple  Apprehension,  Judgment, 
and  Eeason ;  and  it  is  probable  that  it  was  only  by  an 
unfortunate  oversight  that  Kant,  in  passing  forward, 
from  Judgment  (that  first  occurred  to  him)  to  Eeason 
(or  the  Syllogism)  did  not  also  pass  backward  to  Simple 
Apprehension.  If  he  had  done  so,  he  would  have  made 
good  for  himself  the  whole  of  Logic.  As  Reason  seemed 
to  yield  and  legalize  the  Ideas,  Judgment  the  Categories ; 
so  from  Simple  Apprehension  he  might  have  drawn  an 
equal  warrant  and  authority  for  his  Pure  Perceptions, 
Time  and  Space.      In  that  case  the  system  would  have 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  SYLLOGJ       .  299 

had  the  security  of  an  entire  science  as  basis  of  Bupport, 
and  not  the  insecurity  and  unsatisfactoriness,  instead,  of 
a  mere  incomplete  and  partial  reference.  What  im- 
mediately concerns  as  here,  however,  is  only  the  [deas. 
How  Kant  came  to  his  pure  perceptions,  his  ^Esthetic 
namely,   such   as  at    is,   or    how,    in    his    Analytic,    he 

extricated   from  Judgment   his  Categori all  that    we 

leave  on  one  side  or  behind  us;  we  have  only  to  do  with 
his  Dialectic,  and  with  the  manner  in  which  he  there 
extricates  from  the  three  forms  of  the  Syllogism  his 
three  Ideas.  This,  as  only  technical  and  dry.  I 
Kant,  in  fact,  may  be  said  here  to  extricatt  only  what  he 
wants,  and  that,  too,  only  by  the  most  arbitrary  and 
absurd  torture  for  his  own  convenience. 

It  is  sufficient  for  us  to  understand  at  present  that  all 
such  proceedings  here  of  Kant  are  but  respective  pre- 
liminaries to  the  destruction  of  the  proofs  for  the  existence 
of  God.  And  that  they  can  be  nothing  else  appears  at 
once  from  the  very  definition  of  an  Idea.  "  I  understand 
by  Idea,"  says  Kant,  "a  necessary  notion  of  reason,  to 
which  there  can  be  given  no  congruent  object  in  the 
senses."  That  is,  though  necessary  notions  of  reason, 
the  Ideas  are  objectively  transcendent,  or  they  su 
objects  that  have  no  existence  in  rerum  naiura  ;  and  are 
only  subjectively  transcendental — there,  namely,  with  a 
calculated   function    of   regulating  the  in!'  if   the 

understanding  into  ultimate  unity  and  totality:  they 
apply  a  collective,  systematizing,  or  synthesizing 
dition  to  experience  as  a  whole;  but  are  no  more  than 
mental  principles  only  illusively  conceived  respectively  to 
denote  things.  Now,  what  is  called  the  Transcendental 
Ideal,  or  God,  can  he  no  exception  here;  and  we  see  at 
once  that,  with  such  presupposition,  Kant  can  only 
declare  all  the  proofs  which  have  so  long  occupied  us, 
merely  null  and  void.     In  this  declaration,  however,  he 


300  CIFFORD  LECTUKE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

extends  to  us  a  scaffolding  of  demonstration,  which  we 
have  now  to  see.  We  begin,  as  has  been  our  way 
hitherto,  with  the  teleological  argument,  the  proof  from 
design.  And  here  Kant  is  at  once  profuse  in  com- 
pliments. He  acknowledges  that  "  This  world  opens  to 
us  an  immeasurable  spectacle  of  variety,  order,  designful- 
ness,  and  beauty ; "  that  the  consequent  proof  "  has  its 
existence  from  the  study  of  nature,  and  takes  thence  ever 
new  force ;  that,  accordingly,  "  it  raises  our  belief  in 
a  Supreme  Originator  up  to  an  irresistible  conviction ; " 
and  that  "  it  would  be  wholly  in  vain  to  seek  to  with- 
draw anything  from  its  credit " — "  one  glance  at  the 
miracle  of  nature  and  the  majesty  of  the  All  rescues 
reason  from  every  too  nice  doubt,  as  from  a  dream." 
He  had  already  praised  Plato  in  the  same  reference,  for 
that  he,  namely,  "  rightly  saw  in  nature  clear  proofs  of 
its  origin  from  thoughts — plant,  animal,  the  order  of 
nature,  and  the  plan  of  the  whole  cogently  evincing  that 
they  were  only  possible  on  thoughts ; "  and  he  goes  on  to 
exalt  these  ideas  of  the  philosopher  above  the  copy-like 
procedure  of  the  physicist.  In  fact,  in  Kant's  latest 
Kritik,  that  of  Judgment,  the  lapse  of  years  has  only  led  to 
the  recording,  if  possible,  of  still  stronger  expressions  of 
consideration  and  respect  for  the  argument  from  design. 
One  would  like  to  say,  indeed,  that  Kant  is  only  half- 
hearted in  his  opposition  to  it,  and  that  he  is  only 
reluctantly  compelled  to  the  course  he  takes  by  the 
exigencies  of  his  system.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  that 
system,  namely,  that  all  objects  are  only  formations  of 
our  own  within  us,  to  which  design,  consequently,  as  a 
modifying  principle  from  without  or  from  elsewhere, 
would  seem  not  possibly  to  apply.  Kant,  on  his  system, 
can  allow  no  source  for  the  notion  of  design,  but  a  sub- 
jective harmony,  or  a  subjective  "as  if,"  a  subjective 
maxim,  that  is  within  us,  and  not  from  without  at  all. 


AN  IDEA THE  IDEAL.  301 

Hence  one  is  apt  to  be  persuaded  that,  but  for  his 
system,  Kant  would  be  himself  the  most  enthusiastic  of 
'Ideologists.  And  so,  consequently,  only  to  his  system  is 
it  to  be  imputed  that  he  brings  himself  to  make  the 
objections  which  we  have  now  to  consider.  It  is  from 
the  standing-ground  of  the  system  that  he  remarks  first, 
The  question  here  can  be  readily  1  nought  to  a  conclusive 
answer  at  once,  "For  how  can  an  experience  ever  be 
given,  which  were  adequate  to  an  Idea  ?  Why,  an  Idea, 
(that  is  one  of  Kant's  peculiar  three),  is  just  that  that  has 
nothing  empirical  correspondent  to  it."  And  we  are 
reminded  of  his  earlier  words :  "  The  Ideas  (his  Ideas, 
namely)  are  sophistications  of  reason's  own  :  the  wisest 
of  men,  even  when  aware  and  on  their  guard  against  it, 
can  never  wholly  escape  the  illusion  which  is  always 
there  to  mislead  and  mock  them."  "A  necessary  all- 
sufficient  God  is  a  Transcendental  Idea  so  boundlessly 
great,  so  exaltedly  high  above  everything  empirical,  that 
never  in  all  experience  were  it  possible  to  beat  up 
matter  for  the  filling  of  it."  To  seek  in  the  conditioned 
for  the  unconditioned  were  in  vain  and  without  a  clue; 
for  were  it  found,  even  as  found,  it  would  be  itself  con- 
ditioned. And  it  is  only  in  the  conditioned  that  any 
such  search  can  lie  made;  for  the  instrument  of  such  a 
search  is  but  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect,  a  principle 
which  is  only  in  place  in  possible  experience,  and  has  no 
application  beyond  it.  If  even,  then,  what  is  sought  is 
out  from,  and  beyond,  the  conditioned,  where  find  a 
possible  bridge  to  it,  since  for  all  and  any  new  acquisition 
of  knowledge,  we  can  only  be  referred  to  experience  and 
the  law  of  cause  and  effect  that  obtains  in  it  ? 

It   is  here   now   that    Kant,    passing    from    his    own 
peculiar  views,  enunciates  that  respect  for  the  teleol 
argument  which   we  have  already  seen  ;  but,  even  while 
commending    it    and   bidding    it    God-speed,   he   cannot 


302  GIFFOKD  LECTUKE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

accept  its  claims  —  the  claims  of  this  argument  to 
apodictic  certainty :  he  will  attemper  and  rebate  these 
claims  to  a  proper  moderation  and  modesty.  And  he 
begins  by  stating  it  in  what  to  him  are  its  four  moments  : — 
1.  "  Everywhere  in  the  world  there  are  to  be  found 
evident  signs  of  an  arrangement  on  express  intention, 
carried  out  with  great  wisdom  and  in  a  whole  of  in- 
describable variety  of  content,  as  well  as  of  unlimited 
magnitude  of  extent.  2.  This  designful  order  is  quite 
adventitious  to  the  things  of  this  world,  and  attaches  to 
them  only  extrinsically.  3.  There  exists,  therefore,  a 
wise  and  high  being  who,  as  an  intelligence,  must,  with 
free-will,  be  cause  of  this  world.  4.  The  unity  of  this 
cause  may  be  inferred  from  the  unity  of  the  world  in  the 
reciprocal  relation  of  its  parts."  That  must  be  admitted, 
on  the  part  of  Kant,  to  be  only  fair  statement.  He  then 
alludes  to  the  possibility  of  a  cavil  in  respect  of  natural 
reason  when,  from  the  mere  analogy  of  certain  pro- 
ductions of  nature  with  those  of  man,  in  houses,  ships, 
watches,  etc,  we  conclude  to  just  such  a  causality  for 
these  natural  productions  as  well — a  will  and  understand- 
ing, namely ;  thus  referring  to  another  cause  the  inner 
possibility  of  "  free-working  nature  itself  (which  perhaps 
alone  gives  possibility  to  all  art  and  even  reason)." 
With  no  more  than  allusion  here,  and  just  the  hint  that, 
peradventure,  his  own  transcendental  critique  might,  if  it 
chose,  subvert  all  such  reasoning,  he  passes  on  to  his 
own  formal  objections  to  the  main  argument  itself.  And 
of  these  the  first  concerns  form  as  distinguished  from 
matter.  The  argument  from  design,  that  is,  founds 
wholly  on  the  form,  which  seems  to  have  been  added  to, 
or  infused  into  things,  so  that,  as  means  to  ends,  they 
appear  to  constitute  a  single  series  and  system  of  final 
causes.  That  form,  these  connections  seem  independent 
of  the  things  themselves :  they   (the  latter)  themselves, 


THE  TELEOLOGICAL  PROOF.  303 

and  in  themselves,  are  not  such  that  were  they  nol 
members,  native  members,  essential  members  of  the  series 
and  system  we  see,  they  would  contradicl  themselves. 
The  contrivance,  that  is,  the  designfulness,  does  not 
depend  on  things  in  their  matter,  but  only  in  their  form. 
What  agency  seems  to  be  operative,  consequently,  is  thai 
of  an  architect  or  artificer  who  may  be  responsible  for 
the  form,  the  adaptation,  which  has  been  given  to  things, 
but  not  as  Creator  from  whom  derives  the  very  mutter  of 
which  they,  individually,  or  as  a  whole;,  consist.  His 
second  objection,  Kant's  second  objection  in  the  same 
reference,  is  that,  if  you  infer  a  cause  from  an  effect,  the 
former  must  be  proportioned  to  the  latter:  you  cannol 
impute  to  the  cause  more  than  the  effect  allows  you. 
Now,  who  knows  this  world  in  its  infinitude  ?  So  far  as 
the  knowledge  of  any  of  us  goes,  the  world  is  still 
limited,  and  we  have  no  authority  from  our  own  know- 
ledge of  the  world  to  infer  the  omnipotent,  omniscient, 
all-sufficient  God  whom  we  are  all  forward  to  assert. 
Accordingly,  says  Kant,  it  is  not  from  the  teleological 
argument  that  we  come  to  that  immeasurable  conclusion 
of  a  God,  but  from  an  unconscious  and  involuntary  shift 
— resort  on  our  part  to  the  cosmological  and  ontological 
arguments.  The  design  of  the  teleological  argument  is 
the  contingency  of  the  cosmological  argument  ;  and  it  is 
from  that  contingency  we  infer  the  existence  of  an 
absolutely  necessary  being,  while  it  is  from  the  influence 
of  the  considerations  under  the  ontological  argument  that 
we  come  to  the  idea  of  an  ens  realissimum.  of  a  being 
that  is  in  himself  limitless  and  the  sum  of  all  realities. 

And  now  we  have  before  us  the  entile  course  of 
reasoning  which  Kant  has  instituted  against  the  t. -leu- 
logical  argument,  partly  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
peculiarity  of  his  own  system,  and  partly  from  considera- 
tions which  at  least  take  on  a  more  general  aspect.     The 


304  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  FIFTEENTH. 

latter  alone  call  for  any  special  remark  from  us  at 
present.  In  that  reference,  we  may  say  of  the  objection 
in  regard  to  form  and  matter,  that  Kant  has  forgot  his 
own  relative,  or  at  least  relevant,  metaphysic.  Notion 
without  perception  is  empty :  perception  without  notion 
is  blind.  This  he  said  once,  and  it  is  identically  the 
same  principle  that  is  potent  and  at  work  when  we  say, 
Form  without  Matter  is  empty,  Matter  without  Form  is 
blind.  A  matterless  form  would  vanish,  and  a  formless 
matter  never  even  be.  Either,  in  fact,  is  but  an  element 
of  the  other.  Both  together  are  the  concrete  truth;  as 
much  as  an  inside  and  an  outside.  Then  as  regards  the 
objection  that  we  can  infer  no  more  than  an  architect  or 
an  artificer,  and  that,  too,  only  in  the  relative  proportion, 
I  fancy  the  answer  will  be  in  every  mouth,  It  is  precisely 
an  architect  or  an  artificer  that  we  do  infer,  and  precisely 
also  in  proportion  of  the  work  ;  but  just  in  proportion  of 
the  work,  that  architect  and  that  artificer  must  be,  and 
can  only  be,  He  that  is;  and  whom  there  is  none  other 
beside,  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  first  and  the  last,  the 
beginning  and  the  end. 


GIFFOED  LECTUEE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

I  hr  cosmological  proof — Contingency — Ah  alio  em  and  esse  a  st  — 
The  special  contingency  an  actual  fact  in  experience  —  This 
Kant  would  put  out  of  sight — Jehovah — Two  elements  in  the 
argument,  experience  and  ideas  —  The  generality  of  the 
experience  —  Also  of  the  idea  —  Contingency  is  a  particular 
empirical   fact — Ens   n  -Only  the   ontological   argu- 

ment in  disguise — Logical  inference— But  just  generally  the 
all-necessary  being  of  such  a  world-- Hume  anticipated  Kant 
— Why  force  analogy — Why  transcend  nature — No  experience 
of  such  cause  which  must  not  exceed  the  effect— Hume's  early 
memoranda— The  "nest"— All  Kant  dependent  on  his  own 
constant  sense  of  school-distinctions — His  entire  world— The 
system  being  true,  what  is  true?— The  ontological  argument- 
No  thinking  a  thing  will  bring  it  to  be— What  it  all  comes 
to,  the  single  threefold  wave— Hegel — Middle  Age  view  from 
Augustine  to  Tauler — Meister  Eckhart— Misunderstanding  of 
mere  understanding  —  The  wickedest  then  a  possible  divine 
reservoir  —  Adam  Smith  and  the  chest  of  drawers—  Absurd 
for  Kant  to  make  reason  proper  the  "transcendent  shine"— The 
Twelfth  Night  cake,  but  the  ehrliche  Kant. 

The  last  lecture  concerned  the  proof  from  design  ;  we 
come  now  to  the  other  two,  and  first  to  that  which  is 
named  Cosmological.  As  is  known,  the  fulcrum  of  this 
proof  is  the  peculiarity  of  existence  as  existence.  Exist- 
ence, that  is,  as  existence,  is  contingent.  But  this  word 
has  so  many  meanings,  important  meanings, — even,  in 
philosophical  application,  crucial  meanings, —  that  a  little 
preliminary  explanation  in  its  regard  may  seem  called 
for,  and  may  prove  useful.  In  a  former  part  of  the 
course  wo  had  a  contingency  of  things  which  almost 
meant    chance.      It  is  common    knowledge    thai    events 

u 


306  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

happen,  which  might  have  been  foreseen  and  calculated; 
and  it  is  equally  common  knowledge  that  other  events 
happen  which  no  faculty  of  vision  or  power  of  reason, 
omniscience  apart,  could  either  have  foreseen  or  calculated. 
Xow,  philosophically,  that  to  me  is,  as  proper  quality 
and  fundamental  condition  of  things,  the  main  contin- 
gency. I  may  walk  the  streets  with  whatever  care  I 
may ;  but  I  may  for  all  that  slip  on  a  bit  of  orange  peel, 
and  fracture  a  limb  or  dislocate  a  joint.  Such  con- 
tingency as  that  is  our  very  element ;  we  pass  our  lives 
in  it,  and  are  never  safe.  The  powers  of  nature  threaten 
us  from  all  sides,  and  we  must  wall  them  out.  As  I 
have  already  explained,  this  is  the  necessary  and  un- 
avoidable result  of  externality  as  externality.  Then  in 
passing  from  the  one  argument  to  the  other,  design  was 
spoken  of  as  contingency.  This,  however,  is  a  use  of 
the  word  not  quite  common  in  English,  and  was  suggested 
for  the  moment  to  meet  the  language  of  Kant.  Kant, 
that  is,  in  order  to  reduce  the  teleological  argument  to 
the  ontological,  through  and  by  means  of  the  cosmo- 
logical,  characterized  the  design  which  we  see  in  things 
as  zufdllig  to  them,  contingent  to  them.  And  by  this  he 
meant  that  this  ordering  of  things  which  we  call  design 
is  not  inherent  in  the  things  themselves,  but  something- 
added  to  them  as  though  from  without.  Contingency,  in 
this  sense,  is  inessentiality,  adventitiousness,  extrinsicality. 
It  is  easy  to  understand  that  the  order  of  the  things  on 
a  dinner  table  is  such  inessentiality,  adventitiousness, 
extrinsicality,  contingency ;  it  is  not  inherent  in  these 
things ;  it  is  something  given  to  them  —  something 
zvfdllig.  And  we  see  so  that  at  least  the  German  word 
may,  naturally  and  legitimately  enough,  be  used  in  such 
sense  and  with  such  application.  As  for  the  English 
word  contingent,  if  similarly  used,  the  shade  of  meaning 
implied  wTill  not  really  be  found  unintelligible  or  uncon- 


CONTINGENCY.  307 

formable  and  misplaced.  A  third  sense  of  contingent  is 
proper  to  the  cosmological  argument  which  we  have  now 
in  hand.  The  very  fulcrum  of  that  argument,  in  fact, 
lies  in  the  word.  Because  all  the  things  of  this  world 
are  capable  of  being  characterized  as  effects,  we  infer  a 
cause  for  them.  If  no  more  than  effects,  they  are 
unsupported  in  themselves,  and  seem  bodily  and  miscel- 
laneously to  fall.  That  is,  they  are  contingent  So  it  is 
that,  in  the  very  word,  there  lies  the  call  for  the  argu- 
ment in  question.  The  contingent,  as  an  ah  alio  esse, 
necessarily  refers  to  an  esse  that  is  a  se  ;  what  depends 
only  must  depend  on  something  else.  The  cosmological, 
like  the  teleologieal  argument,  proceeds,  therefore,  from  a 
fact  in  experience.  Design  is  such  fart,  and  so  also  is 
contingency — contingency  in  the  sense  of  the  unsupported- 
ness,  the  powerlessness  of  things  in  themselves.  In  the 
three  arguments  for  the  being  of  a  God,  we  proceed  either 
from  the  fact  to  the  idea,  or  from  the  idea  to  the  fact. 
In  the  ontologieal  argument,  namely,  we  reason  from  the 
idea  of  God  to  the  fact  of  His  existence,  while  in  the 
cosmological  and  the  teleologieal  argument-,  we  reason 
from  the  facts  of  existence  to  the  idea  of  God.  What 
Kant  misses  in  the  ontologieal  argument  is  the  element 
of  reality,  existence,  fact,  or  the  element  that  depends  on 
experience.  It  is  in  vain  to  look  for  such  element,  he 
avers,  in  mere  ideas.  His  action  with  the  two  other 
arguments,  again,  is,  so  to  speak,  reverse-wise — to  put 
aside  this  element — the  element  of  actual  fact,  on  which 
they,  both  of  them,  found.  It  is  Kant's  general  object, 
that  is,  in  regard  to  the  reasoning  for  the  existence  of 
God,  to  reduce  the  teleologieal  to  the  cosmological  argu- 
ment and  both  to  the  ontologieal,  which,  as  dependent  on 
mere  notions,  he  thinks  that  he  will  be  at  little  pains  to 
destroy. 

Kant  himself  states  the  cosmological  argument  thus: — 


308  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

"  If  something  exists,  then  an  absolutely  necessary  being 
must  also  exist ;  but  at  least  I  myself  exist :  therefore 
there  exists  an  absolutely  necessary  being."  My  exist- 
ence, namely,  is  contingent.  It  is  no  existence  complete 
in  itself  and  sufficient  of  itself ;  it  is  only  a  derivative 
existence,  and  an  existence  in  many  ways  dependent. 
Whether  as  derivative  or  dependent,  it  has  its  support 
elsewhere.  It  is  unsupported  in  itself,  powerless  in 
itself,  a  house  on  the  fall,  a  very  terminable  security. 
But  I  am  no  solitary  case,  I  am  no  exception ;  others 
are  as  I,  and  there  is  not  a  single  thing  in  this  universe 
that  is  not  as  the  others.  All  are  contingent,  all  are 
derivative,  all  are  dependent ;  they  are  all  such  that 
you  postulate  an  originating  and  sustaining  cause  for 
them ;  but  any  such  cause — any  terminal,  final,  and  ulti- 
mate cause,  it  is  impossible  in  the  whole  series  of  causes 
in  the  universe  anywhere  to  find.  Trace  causes  as  you 
may,  you  must  end  always  with  an  effect.  Now,  it  is 
taking  our  stand  on  these  facts  that  we  involuntarily 
conclude  to  the  existence  of  an  absolutely  necessary  being 
that  is  the  reason  at  once  of  the  existence  and  support  of 
all  these  things — of  all  these  things  which  are  so  utterly 
unsupported  and  powerless  in  themselves.  And  so  it  is 
that  the  cosmological  argument  has  been  specially  put  in 
connection  wtth  the  religion  of  power.  Power,  indeed, 
must  have  been  one  of  the  earliest  feelings  that,  in  view 
of  this  great  universe  of  effects,  surged  up  in  the  human 
breast.  In  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  for  example,  what 
an  attribute  is  power !  Hence  that  sublimity  in  which 
the  earth,  the  ball  of  the  universe,  is  but  as  the  footstool 
of  Him  who  says,  I  Am  that  I  Am.  We  have  only  to 
think  of  this  to  have  it  very  vividly  realized  to  us  that 
the  cosmological  argument  is  founded  in  the  depths  of 
man's  own  soul.  It  is  not  an  argument  forced,  scholastic, 
artificial, — it  is  not  a  thing  of  words  ;  it  is  religion  to 


WHAT  KANT  WOULD  PUT  OUT  OF  SIGHT.  309 

the  peoplea  That  whole  image  of  Jehovah  and  the 
;<>olof  the  universe  is  but  the  cosmologies]  argu- 
ment itself  in  its  sublimest  and  must  natural  form. 
Tin-  contingenl  universe  is  but  the  footstool  to  the 
absolute  necessity  of  ( rod. 

We  must  turn  uow,  however,  and  see  how  Kant  would 
deprive  us   of   this   rationality   that    we   have,  to   sc  . 
almost  in  <>ur  very  Mood. 

The  eosmological  argument,  we  may  take  it,  stands 
at  this  moment  before  us  thus:  —  Inasmuch  as  some- 
thing exists  and  contingently  exists,  there  must  exist 
also  something  that  is  absolutely  uecessary.  Of  this 
argument  Kant  admits:  That  "it  is  based  on  experi- 
ence;" that  "it  is  not  led  altogether  d.  priori;"  thai 
it  is  called  the  eosmological  proof,  for  this  reason, 
that  the  world,  from  which  it  takes  its  name  and  on 
which  it  founds,  '-is  the  object  of  all  possible  experi- 
Nevertheless,  it  is  precisely  this  ground  of 
experience  which  Kant  would  remove  from  it  ;  this,  In 
his  desire  to  establish  it  as  a  mere  matter  of  void  ideas 
only.  There  are  thus  in  the  argument  two  interests 
against  both  of  which  Kant  turns.  First,  namely,  there  is 
the  question  of  the  experience;  and,  second,  there  is  that 
of  the  ideas.  On  the  first  question  Kant,  as  I  have  said, 
would  put  out  of  sight  the  experience;  and,  on  the 
second,  he  would  have  us  regard  the  necessary  being 
that  is  concluded  to,  as  a  mere  idea,  and  as  a  mere  idea, 
further,  that  is  only  illicitly  converted  into  the  other 
idea  of  the  ens  realissimum,  or  Cod.  Of  these  two 
operations  Kant  himself  gives  the  description  thus: 
"In  this  eosmological  argument  there  come  together  so 
sophistical  propositions  that  speculative  n  a 
3  to  have  excited  here  all  its  dialectical  skill  in 
order  to  effect  the  greatest  possible  transcendental  false 
show:"'   but  he  (Kant)  will   "expose  a   trick  on  it-   part, 


310  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

— the  trick  to  set  up,  in  a  masked  form,  an  old  argument 
for  a  new  one,  as  though  with  appeal  to  the  agreement  of 
two  witnesses,  one,  namely,  of  reason,  and  the  other  of 
experience,  while  all  the  time  it  is  only  the  former  that 
is  present,  having  simply  changed  its  clothes  and  its 
voice  in  order  to  pass  for  the  latter  as  well."  That 
on  the  part  of  Kant,  plainly,  is  to  the  effect  that  the 
cosmological  argument  is  but  the  ontological  argument 
in  disguise.  What  is  alone  concerned  in  it  is  the  infer- 
ence from  mere  ideas,  while  the  reference  to  experience 
is  but  an  idle  trick  and  an  unfounded  show.  With 
that,  I  think,  we  may  assume  as  substantiated  what  has 
been  said  in  the  assignment  to  Kant  of  two  relative 
operations.      So,  now,  of  these  in  their  order. 

Collecting,  connecting,  and  reducing  the  various  rela- 
tive clauses,  we  may  take  Kant's  first  objection  to  run 
somewhat  in  this  manner  :— The  cosmological  argument 
professes  to  take  its  ground  on  experience.  This  experi- 
ence, however,  is  indefinitely  general  :  it  proceeds  from 
no  single  definite  existence  whatever  ;  and  it  attains  to 
no  single  definite  existence  whatever.  Kant's  actuating 
motive  in  such  propositions  is,  probably,  again  to  be 
found  only  in  his  system.  Nevertheless,  he  begins  with 
a  certain  show  of  general  argumentation ;  and  it  is  this 
we  have  first  to  see. 

So  far  as  the  indefinite  generality  is  concerned,  Kant's 
expressions  are  that  the  proof  in  question  is  only 
"  referent  to  an  existence  given  by  empirical  conscious- 
ness in  general,"  and  it  "  avails  itself  of  this  experience 
only  to  take  a  single  step,  namely,  to  the  existence  of  a 
necessary  being  in  general."  One,  of  course,  cannot  well 
understand  how  a  step,  as  a  step,  should  be  objected  to 
because  it  is  single.  A  single  step  may  be  true  enough  ; 
a  step — any  step — is  not  necessarily  false  because  it  is 
single.      But  the  expression,  probably,  is   merely  inci- 


ONLY  GENERALITY  OF  EXPERIENCE  AND  IDEA.      311 

dental  on  the  part  of  Kant,  who  has  in  hia  eye,  at  the 
moment,  only  the  immediate  object  of  the  step,  "  the 
existence,  namely,  of  a  necessary  being  in  general;" 
and  has  no  thought,  perhaps,  bul  of  the  generality 
involved  It  may  be  asked,  however,  Are  we  the  least 
bit  worse  off  because  the  experience  is  a  general  experi- 
ence? The  fact  and  basis  of  experience,  it  at  least 
allows,  in  common  with  the  other  phrases  which  have 
been  already  quoted  ;  and  the  generality  of  an  experience 
is  not  seen  at  once  to  be  tantamount  to  its  extinction. 
Surely,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  on  its  side  the  advantage 
lies;  surely  it  is  a  great  thing  to  say  that  we  shall 
reach  the  same  ((inclusion  if  you  give  US  anything  at  all. 
You  are  only  asked  to  allow  the  fact  that  something 
exists ;  it  is  enough  that  you  grant  us  any  experience 
whatever;  we  are  not  particular  what  experience;  just 
give  us  an  experience  of  any  kind — experience  absolutely 
general  if  you  like.  The  objection  withdraws  nothing  from 
the  argument ;  rather,  indeed,  it  only  adds  to  it.  Nay. 
what  does  Kant  himself  say?  "It  is  something  very 
remarkable,"  he  naively  admits,  "  that  if  it  is  presupposed 
that  something,  anything,  exists,  the  conclusion  cannot 
be  escaped  that  something  also  necessarily  exists."  After 
all,  then,  generality  as  a  drawback  does  not  seem  to  hold 
even  in  Kant's  own  eyes. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  generality — this, 
namely,  that  the  necessary  being  inferred  is  also  a 
generality.  The  alleged  experience,  Kant  says,  is  only  ;i 
step  to  "  the  existence  of  a  necessary  being  in  general." 
"  but  not  demonstrating  this  necessity  in  regard  of  any 
particular  thing";  "what  sort  of  Eigenschaften,  what 
sort  of  properties  or  qualities,  the  necessary  being 
possesses,  the  empirical  ground  of  proof  is  incompetent  to 
declare."  It  must  be  some  importation  from  his  own 
system  that  Kant  has  in  mind   here   when    he   objects   to 


312  GIFFORD  LECTUEE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

the  argument  as  not  leading  to  a  one  empirical  object. 
Otherwise,  surely,  of  all  philosophers,  Kant  is  the  only 
one  who  has  complained  that  he  cannot  clap  an  actual 
hand  or  eye  on  God !  How  could  God  possibly  be  any 
particular  experience,?  The  infinite  is  not  the  finite. 
But  to  take  Kant  as  he  speaks,  he  would  seem  to  be 
unhappy  and  out  of  heart  because,  in  reasoning  to  God, 
he  fails  to  get  in  touch  with  some  one  empirical  object, 
or  the  actual  properties  of  some  one  empirical  object. 
Are  we  to  give  up  or  despair  of  God,  then,  because  He  is 
not  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  or  the  Gates  of  Gaza  ? 

But,  in  the  reference  to  generality,  if  it  is  not  to  be 
objected  that  we  do  not  come  to  some  particular,  so 
neither  is  it  to  be  objected  that  we  do  not  start  from 
some  particular.  Nay,  if  the  experience  we  start  from  is 
in  a  certain  way  general,  it  is  also,  after  all,  in  a  certain 
way  particular.  That  is,  it  is  not  from  mere  indefinite- 
ness,  from  mere  experience  in  name,  that  we  start,  but 
from  an  actual  fact,  and  actually  definite  in  and  of 
experience.  We  start  from — the  cosmological  argument 
rests  on — an  actual,  particular,  empirical  fact.  Con- 
tingency is  a  fact ;  contingency  is  particular ;  contingency 
is  empirical ;  contingency  is  actual ;  and  it  is  from  con- 
tingency that  all  our  reasoning  starts,  and  on  contingency 
that  all  our  reasoning  rests.  Kant  has  been  no  more 
able  to  quash  or  put  out  of  sight  contingency  as  a  fact  of 
experience  in  the  cosmological  argument,  than  he  was 
able  to  quash  or  put  out  of  sight  design  as  a  fact  of 
experience  in  the  teleological  argument.  And  so  long  as 
such  facts  remain,  the  ontological  argument,  which  rests 
wholly  on  ideas,  cannot  be  used  as  a  lever  for  the 
destruction  of  its  cosmological  and  teleological  fellows. 

But,  now,  to  turn  to  Kant's  second  objection  to  the 
cosmological  argument — that,  namely,  it  was  still  only  a 
trick  when,  in  intromission  with  mere  ideas,  it  converted 


LOGICAL  INFERENCE.  313 

the  necessary  being  of  the  first  part  of  the  supposed  proof 
into  the  ens  realimmum,  or  supreme  being,  of  the  second 
part.  Arrived  once  for  all  at  the  notion  of  the  nea 
being,  Kant  intimates,  we  only  look  about  us  for  whal 
other  desirable  qualities  we  suppose  rach  a  being  must 
have,  in  order  to  arrive  at  its  own  complete  and  perfect 
substantiation.  These  qualities  are  supposed  to  be  found 
in  the  idea  of  supreme  reality  alone ;  and  so  the  neces- 
sary being  at  first  hand  is  converted  into  the  supremely 
real  being  at  second  hand.  Kant  goes  on  at 
length  in  the  discussion  of  this  matter.  The  better  to 
expose  the  fallacy,  he  is  even  at  pains  to  put  the  whole 
reasoning,  as  he  alleges,  in  the  technical  syllogistic  form. 
"  All  blind  show  is  most  readily  detected,"  he  saj 
we  set  it  down  before  us  in  a  scholastically  correct 
shape."  With  all,  however,  sentence  after  sentence, 
phrase  upon  phrase,  word  upon  word,  and  all  the  technical 
processes  of  the  dryest  school  logic,  it  comes  to  this  that 
the  cosmological  argument,  having  only  pretended  to 
reason  from  a  ground  of  experience,  has  intromitted 
with  ideas  only,  and  has  simply  converted,  fallaciously, 
the  mere  idea  of  a  necessary  being  into  the  further  idea 
of  the  all-reallest  being;  in  short,  as  has  been  already 
said,  the  cosmological  argument  is  no  more  and  no  less 
than  the  ontological  argument  in  disguise.  In  Kant's 
own  words,  what  the  cosmological  argument  maintains  is 
this:  "The  notion  of  the  all-reallest  being  is  the  only 
notion  whereby  a  necessary  being  can  be  thought;  that 
is,  there  necessarily  exists  a  supreme  being;"  and  that  is 
to  Kant  an  ignoratio  elenchi.  We  commit  no  fallacy, 
however,  no  ignoratio  elenchi,  if  from  one  logically 
established  proposition  we  only  logically  deduce  another. 
Probably  most  people  would  be  quite  content  with  the 
.me  proposition,  and  would  give  themselves  little  concern 
about  the  other.      All-necessary,  they  might  say,  and  all- 


314  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

reallest  come  pretty  well  to  the  same  thing ;  it  is  posi- 
tively enough  that  it  should  be  either.  But  there  is  no 
difficulty  in  even  logically  deducing  the  one  from  the 
other.  What  has  its  necessity  within  itself  is  sufficient 
for  itself,  and  is  without  dependence  on  another.  That 
is,  it  is  without  dependence  for  its  reality  on  anything 
else ;  it  is  without  any  negation  to  its  reality :  it  is  the 
all-reallest !  The  one  proposition  is  simply  contained  in 
the  other ;  and  we  have  no  call  to  go  to  experience  in 
search  of  it.  Kant  has  simply  forgot  his  own  doc- 
trine of  analytic  propositions.  As  certain  as  (Kant's  own 
example)  the  proposition — all  bodies  are  extended — is  an 
analytic  proposition,  the  truth  of  which  requires  analysis 
only,  and  no  resort  to  actual  experience,  so  certain  is  it 
that  the  proposition — the  all-necessary  being  is  the  all- 
reallest  being — is  no  less  an  analytic  proposition  that,  as 
such  and  so  far,  is  independent  of  experience.  The 
cosmological  argument  is  sufficient  within  itself,  and 
neither  requires  nor  takes  support  from  any  other.  But, 
in  a  general  way,  we  are  situated  here  just  as  we  were 
with  the  teleological  argument.  Let  the  teleological  argu- 
ment prove  only  a  former  of  the  world,  then  we  say  the 
former  of  such  a  world  must  have  been  its  Creator.  And 
let  the  cosmological  argument  prove  only  the  all-necessary 
being  of  the  world,  then  we  say,  the  all-necessary  being 
of  all  that  contingency  of  the  world  must  be,  and  can 
only  be,  what  is  reallest  in  the  world  ;  and  that,  namely, 
is  the  Most  High  God. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  Hume  not  to  remark  here  that, 
though  the  German  words  and  ways  seem  so  very  unlike, 
Kant,  when  he  wrote,  must  have  had  before  him  all  the 
three  relative  writings  of  the  good  David :  the  essay, 
namely,  Of  a  Particular  Providence  and  of  a  Future  State, 
The  Natural  History  of  Religion,  and  the  Dialogues  con- 
cerning Natural  Eelicjion.      Much  of  what  the  German 


HUME  ANTICIPATED  KANT.  -"'1  5 

says  had,  in  his  own  way,  been  already  Baid  by  the  - 
Thus  Hume  talks  also  of  houses  and  ships,  and  conceives 
it  only  to  force  analogy  to  transfer  it  from  things  6nite 
to  Buch  an  unexampled  infinite:  it  may  be  that  for  such 
powers  and  quality,  Bays  Hume  too,  we  need  not  go  be- 
yond nature  or  even  matter  itself  We  can  only  reason 
from  experience,  and  experience  has  no  locus  standi  on 
such  an  elevation.  Then  Hume's  objection  of  the  uni- 
verse being  a  singular  effect,  thai  is,  that  we  can  only 
credit  the  cause  with  no  more  than  we  find  in  the  effect; 
and  that  we  cannot  return  from  the  cause  as  with  new 
data  t«»  extended  inference, — all  thai  is  precisely  what 
Kant  means  by  the  translating  of  absolute  necessity  into 
absolute  reality.  The  young  Hume  in  the  early  memor- 
andum book  referred  to  by  Burton  (i  135)  has  (as  we 
partly  know)  some  excellent  expressions  in  regard  to  the 
three  proofs  of  the  existence  of  a  Ciod,  which  Kant,  of 
course,  had  no  opportunity  of  seeing,  but  which  have 
their  interest  here.  The  first  of  these  proofs  runs,  "  There 
is  something  necessarily  existent,  and  what  is  so  is  in- 
finitely perfect;"  and  the  third,  "The  idea  of  infinite 
perfection  implies  that  of  actual  existence."  It  is  really 
very  strange,  but  these  two  propositions  suggest,  nut  too 
imperfectly  on  the  whole,  Kant's  entire  relative  action, 
which  is  the  complaint  that  the  cosmological  argument 
converts,  first,  necessary  existence  into  infinite  perfection, 
and,  second,  infinite  perfection  into  necessary  existence, 
thus  placing  itself  at  last  only  on  the  ontological  argument. 
Kant  follows  up  his  general  argumentation  by  indi- 
cating and  shortly  refuting  what  he  calls  "an  entire  nest 
of  dialectical  assumptions  that  is  concealed  in  the  cosmo- 
logical proof."  The  entire  "lies!,"  however,  may  he  said 
to  be  a  construction  of  his  peculiar  system.  Kant  says, 
for  example,  that  causality  and  the  other  principles  of 
reasoning   employed    in    the   argument    concern    only  the 


316  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

world  of  the  senses  and  have  no  meaning  out  of  it ;  and, 
in  each  of  the  four  heads  which  he  enumerates,  there 
appears  nothing  whatever  else.  That  just  amounts  to 
the  one  averment  peculiar  to  the  system,  that  whatever, 
namely,  is  incapable  of  being  actually  experienced  is 
nothing  but  a  Hirngespinnst,  a  cobweb  of  the  brain.  As 
regards  God,  it  is  valid  reasoning  to  Kant  that  in  this 
world  as  he  (Kant)  has  constituted  it,  there  cannot  be 
an  actual  object  of  the  senses,  named  God ;  and  so  God 
can  only  be  an  Idea,  an  idea  of  our  own,  and  useful  for 
us  in  giving  a  sort  of  convenient  unity  and  arrangement 
to  the  house  we  live  in.  God  is  precisely  that  to  Kant, 
and  He  is  nothing  more. 

All  these  wonderful  constructions  of  Kant,  toys  of  his 
own  gluing,  all  spring  from  the  constant  sense  of  dis- 
tinctions that  is  the  single  life  within  him.  Every  reader 
of  Kant,  even  the  least  familiar,  must  have  memory  of 
this.  There  is  probably  not  a  page  of  Kant  in  which  he 
does  not  split  up  something  into  two  distinctions — dis- 
tinctions to  which  he  is  apt  to  give  contrasting  Latin 
names,  as  the  quid  facti,  and  the  quid  juris,  and  actually 
thousands  of  others.  Kant,  in  fact,  is  a  very  schoolmaster. 
He  is  constantly  laying  down  the  law — a  law  that  con- 
cerns verbalisms  only.  If  Kant  is  ever  real,  it  is  where, 
as  in  his  Practical  Kritik,  he  is  occupied  with  Morals  ; 
and  even  there  I  honestly  believe  that  it  would  be  quite 
possible  to  show  that  his  very  best  findings  are  but 
artificial  results  of  his  pedagogic  distinctions.  Distinctions 
and  artificiality  are  certainly  both  the  levers  and  the 
materials  of  his  theoretic  system.  Time  and  space  are 
both  within  us,  and  in  them  there  are  our  own  sensations : 
these  are  the  materials,  and  the  only  materials  of  per- 
ceptive knowledge ;  and  they  become  such  by  being  in  a 
twelvefold  manner  categorized  into  our  self- consciousness. 
There  are  further,  three  Ideas,  to  be  sure,  but  they  are 


kant's  entire  world.  317 

only  ideas — only  ideas  of  order  and  arrangement  for  our 
own  private  use.  Now  that  is  really  the  entire  world  to 
Kant,  and  he  has  made  it  wholly  and  solely  out  of  dis- 
tinctions in  his  own  vitals.  Does  it  give  more  reality  to 
this  soap-bubble  of  a  universe  that  it  hangs  between  two 
absolutely  unknown  aj's,  mere  algebraical  xs,  that  are  only 
supposed,  only  feigned,  though  named  things  in  them- 
selves; the  one  on  this  side  for  sensation,  and  the  other 
on  that  side  for  belief  ?  Never  was  the  world  so  befooled 
by  a  system  as  it  has  been  befooled  by  the  system  of 
Kant ;  and  the  world  has  no  excuse  for  itself,  but  that 
Kant  had,  with  such  perfect  conviction,  with  such  lumi- 
nous and  voluminous  detail,  fooled  himself  into  it.  What, 
according  to  this  system,  are  we  to  suppose  truth  to  be  ? 
If  it  (the  system)  is,  what  is  there  that  is  true  ? 
The  sensations  are  not  true.  Their  truth  is  only 
unknown  points  in  an  unknown  dark.  Time  and  space 
are  not  true:  they  are  only  figments  of  my  imagination. 
The  categories  are  not  true  :  they  come  from  a  tree,  an 
Yggdrasil  that  has  no  roots,  but  again  in  me.  The  Ideas 
have  no  truth :  they  are  mere  illusions.  And  this  me 
itself :  it  is  but  a  logical  breathing,  a  logical  dot  on  a 
logical  i.  Where,  according  to  this  system,  is  there  a 
single  truth  in  the  whole  huge  universe  ? 

But  we  must  come  to  an  end  with  our  consideration  of 
Kant :  we  must  turn  at  last  to  our  final  interest  here :  we 
must  now  see  how  Kant  disposes  of  the  ontological  argu- 
ment. The  form  given  to  that  argument,  which  we  have 
seen  from  the  early  memorandum  book  of  Hume,  is,  per- 
haps, as  simple  and  short,  and  as  good  as  any.  "  The  idea 
of  infinite  perfection  implies  that  of  actual  existence." 
Eeally  the  young  Hume  has  put  what  is  concerned  there 
in  its  very  best  form.  If  you  say  you  have  the  idea  of 
infinite  perfection,  and  yet  that  actual  existence  is  not 
thought  of  in  that  idea,  then  you  only  contradict  yourself. 


318  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

It  would  be  a  very  strange  all-perfection  that  yet  was 
not.  Kant,  of  course,  has  a  good  deal  to  say  in  the 
reference  ;  hut  I  know  not  that  all  he  has  got  to  say 
amounts  to  more  than  the  objection  that  comes  to  every 
one.  "We  can  think  what  we  like,  but  no  thinking  of 
ours  will  make  a  thing  to  be !  It  would  be  a  fine  thing 
if,  only  by  thinking  of  the  "  dollars,"  in  Kant's  well-known 
illustration,  we  could  have  them ;  but —  We  can  all 
readily  understand  as  much  as  that,  and  Anselm  himself 
told  us,  It  was  one  thing  for  a  painter  to  think  his 
picture  and  another  thing  to  make  it.  So  always  when 
we  think  these  easy  thoughts  in  regard  to  this  argument, 
we  are  thrown  back  to  the  question,  Is  it,  then,  a  self- 
contradiction  to  think  God  as  non-existent ;  and  for  the 
reason  that  He  is  infinite,  and  not  like  a  perfect  island, 
or  a  perfect  garden,  etc.,  which,  with  whatever  perfection, 
are  still  things  finite  ?  Is  God  such  and  so  different 
from  all  else,  that  if  we  think  Him,  that  is,  truly  think — 
Him — then  we  will  see  that  He  is  ?  Perhaps  to  put  the 
questions  in  that  manner  is  to  put  them  rightly.  But 
if  so,  then  the  conclusion  is — that  we  are  all  referred  to 
ourselves.  What  we  are  asked  to  do  is  to  think  God ; 
but  if  it  is  only  in  the  actual  thinking  that  the  truth 
emerges,  then  each  of  us  must  do  that  for  himself ;  not 
one  of  us  can  do  that  for  another.  Of  course,  Anselm 
develops  the  matter  in  a  formal  syllogism,  and  into  a 
self-contradiction  on  the  negative  side.  But,  so  put,  we 
cannot  help  suspecting  that  we  have  to  do  with  words 
only,  and  we  remain  unmoved.  We  still  ask  how  think- 
ing— which  will  assure  us  of  the  existence  of  nothing- 
else — will  yet  assure  us  of  the  existence  of  God  ?  That 
is  the  question ;  and  we  see  that  Kant's  objections — all 
summed  up  in  the  illustration  of  the  dollars — are  beside 
the  point,  are  out  of  place.  The  whole  matter  is  for  us 
to  think  God.     But  what  is  God  ? — what  is  this  that  we 


WHAT  IT  ALL  COMES  TO,  THE  THREE  WAVES.         319 

are  to  think?  Now,  in  attempting  to  answer  that 
question,  we  do  think  God — we  just  do  what  is  required. 
And  what  do  we  find  for  result  \  We  find  that  we  have 
thought  this  universe  into  its  source — we  find  that  we 
have  realized  to  thought,  as  a  necessity  of  thought,  the 
single  necessity  of  a  one  eternal,  all-enduring  principle 
which  is  the  root,  and  the  basis,  ami  the  original  of  all  that 
is.  In  fact,  we  may  say  that  when  this  task  of  thought 
is  put  upon  us,  we  just  think,  in  a  moment,  and  at  once, 
and  altogether,  the  teleologies!  argument,  and  the  cosmo- 
logical  argument,  and  the  ontological  argument,  each  and 
all,  summarily,  into  God.  And  with  that  acknowledg- 
ment we  have  the  reality  and  the  substantiation  of 
Natural  Theology:  our  whole  task  is  accomplished — the 
whole  Gifford  problem  solved — in  a  turn  of  the  hand  ! 
What,  in  effect,  are  the  three  arguments  in  proof  of  the 
existence  of  God  '.  There  is  a  triplet  of  perpetual 
appearance  and  reappearance  in  the  ancient  Fathers  of 
the  Church.  It  is  esse, vivere,  intelligere;  and  these  are 
but  three  successive  stages  of  the  world  itself.  To  live 
is  to  be  above  to  be,  and  to  think  is  to  be  above  to  live. 
All  three  are  at  once  in  the  world  ;  and  though  they 
oiler  hands,  as  it  were,  each  to  the  other,  each  is  foi 
itself.  So  it  is  that  the  Three  Proofs  are  but  the  single 
wave  in  the  rise  of  the  soul,  through  the  Trinity  of  the 
Universe,  up  to  the  unity  of  God.  And,  with  such 
tlu  nights  before  us,  it  will  be  found  that  the  ontological 
proof  will  assume  something  of  reality,  and  will  cease  to 
be  a  mere  matter  of  words.  The  very  thought  of  God  is 
of  that  which  is,  and  cannot  not-be. 

It  is  undoubtedly  with  such  thoughts  in  his  mind  that 
Hegel  declares  the  ontological  proof  to  be  alone  the  proof. 
To  him,  manifestly,  it  was  not  an  affair  of  Barbara,  Celarent, 
Barolco,  Bokarila,  and  the  rest  in  mere  words:  it  was  an 
actual  mood  of  mind,   a  veritable   process  of   the   soul,  a 


320  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

movement  of  spirit  to  spirit,  and  a  revelation  of  God  to 
man.  We  might  almost  say  that  this  alone  is  the  meaning 
of  the  work  of  Hegel — that  in  this  alone  he  is  in  earnest 
— that,  in  philosophy  and  in  religion,  as  struggling  to 
this,  he  would  present  himself  almost  literally  on  every 
page.  He  complains  that  recent  theology  speaks  rather  of 
religion  than  of  God ;  whereas,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
whole  interest  was  to  know  God.  What  is  now  only 
a  matter  of  subjective  information  was  then  objectively 
lived.  The  true  relation  is  that  of  spirit  to  spirit.  The 
finite  spirit,  in  separating  itself  from  the  mundane,  or  in 
gathering  up  the  whole  mundane  into  its  essential  reality 
and  truth,  rises  into  unity  and  community  with  the 
infinite  spirit,  and  knower  and  known  are  one.  In  that 
one  intensity,  where  difference  is  at  once  identity  and 
identity  at  once  difference,  man  is  conscious  of  himself 
in  God,  God  is  conscious  of  Himself  in  man.  That 
really  is  what  the  ontological  proof  is  to  Hegel.  Spirit 
gives  testimony  of  itself  to  spirit ;  and  this  testimony  is 
the  true  inner  nature  of  spirit.  "  God,"  says  Hegel,  "  is 
essentially  self-consciousness;"  and  it  is  only  when  man  has 
realized  himself  into  union  with  God,  only  then  also  has 
he  realized  his  true  free  will.  Readers  of  the  history  of 
philosophy  know  that  Hegel  is  by  no  means  singular  in 
these  views  :  they  are  common  and  current  in  the  Middle 
Ages  from  Augustine  to  Tauler.  Meister  Eckhart  alone 
has  passage  after  passage  which,  in  intensity  and  ecstasy, 
leaves  nothing  for  Hegel.  "  The  eye,"  he  cries,  "  with 
which  God  sees  me,  is  the  eye  with  which  I  see  Him ; 
my  eye  and  His  eye  are  one ;  in  righteousness,  I  am 
cradled  in  God,  and  He  in  me.  If  God  were  not,  I  were 
not ;  if  I  were  not,  He  were  not ;  but  there  is  no  need 
to  know  this ;  for  these  are  things  easy  to  be  misunder- 
stood, and  which  are  only  to  be  comprehended  in  the 
spirit."     As  to  this  of  misunderstanding,  Hegel,  too,  says, 


MIDDLE  AGES — ECKHAHT — HEGEL — SMITH.  321 

at  least  in  effect :  If  you  speak  such  things  in  the  terms 
of  the  understanding,  you  will  look  in  vain  to  find  them 
again:  If  you  make  an  ordinary  generalization  of  such 
doctrine,  and  describe  it  in  common  words  as  the  tenet 
of  the  knowing  of  Man  in  God  and  of  God  in  Man,  you 
have  shut  yourself  out  from  it;  you  are  on  the  outside, 
and  have  closed  the  door  on  yourself.  These  things  are 
only  in  the  inmost  being  of  a  man  to  be  struggled  and 
worked  up  to.  Another  ready  objection  is — pantheism. 
But  if  there  is  an  assertion  of  God  in  tire  relation,  there 
is  also  no  denial  of  man.  My  own  objection  is  that  it 
at  least  seems  to  trench  on  a  degradation  of  God :  the 
very  wickedest  and  least  considerable  of  human  beings 
may  represent  himself  as  a  sort  of  reservoir  from  which 
at  any  moment  he  can  draw  on  God,  have  God  on  tap. 
Of  course,  it  may  be  answered  that,  in  the  relation,  take 
it  as  it  is,  there  is  no  room  for  any  moment  of  compulsion 
— it  is  not  a  case  of  mere  ancient  theurgy,  black  art, 
magic ;  the  divine  approach  will  come  at  its  own  good 
time — free ;  and  not  any  one  human  being  that  so 
tempers  himself  is  then  either  wickedest  or  least  consider- 
able. Nay,  in  humanity,  is  it  so  certain  that  the  least 
and  the  greatest,  the  best  and  the  worst,  have  any  such 
mighty  difference  between  them?  May  not  even  the 
least  and  the  worst  cry,  And  we  then — are  nut  we,  too, 
made  in  the  image  of  God  ? 

With  all  this  that  concerns  a  living  ontologieal  proof, 
these  external  manoeuvres  and  contrivances  of  Kant  are 
strangely  in  contrast.  To  him  it  is  quite  clear  that  as 
he  can  reasonably  think  a  hundred  dollars  not  to  exist, 
he  can  equally  think  God  not  to  exist,  but  to  be  a  mere 
idea  of  our  own  respondent  to  our  own  human  desire  for 
order.  Adam  Smith,  in  reply  to  the  Doctrine  of  Utility, 
was  surprised  if  "we  have  no  other  reason  for  praising  a 
man  than  that  for  which  we  commend  a  chesl  of  drawers." 

x 


322  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SIXTEENTH. 

What,  then,  should  be  our  surprise  if,  in  Kant's  reclama- 
tion for  order,  we  have  no  other  reason  for  the  production 
of  a  God  than  that  we  have  for  the  production  of  a  chest 
of  drawers  —  convenience,  namely  !  God  is  but  an 
illusion  or  delusion  caused  by  the  false  light  of  sense 
misleading  our  judgment.  This  light  Kant  calls  the 
"  transcendental  shine,"  and  he  is  very  proud  of  it.  He 
is  wonderfully  contented  with  what  he  thinks  his  dis- 
covery of  these  three  false  lights  of  the  Ideas.  But  if 
any  one  will  just  look  for  himself,  his  wonder  will  be 
— where  they  come  from  ?  When  we  reason  from  the 
contingency  of  all  things,  as  it  were,  to  the  linch-pin  of 
all  things — when  we  reason  from  design  to  a  designer — 
even  when  we  reason  from  a  certain  notion  to  the  exist- 
ence of  the  object  of  that  notion — in  a  word,  in  reasoning 
towards  God,  whether  from  existence  to  idea  or  from 
idea  to  existence,  we  think  we  have  been  only  reasoning ; 
but,  no,  says  Kant,  you  have  been  only  led  by  a  natural 
ignis  fatuus,  which  you  cannot  turn  your  back  upon,  even 
when  you  know  it. 

This  system  of  Kant  is  but  a  Twelfth  Night  cake  of  his 
own  manufacture,  wonderfully  be-clecked  and  be-dizzened, 
be-queened  and  be-kinged,  be-flagged  and  be-turreted  ;  but, 
for  all  that,  it  is  no  more  than  a  thing  of  sugar  and 
crumb  of  bread.  Kay,  even  for  the  quantity  of  the 
bread  and  the  quality  of  the  sugar  that  are  in  it,  we 
cannot  but  thank  Kant,  naming  him  even  there/or,  the 
ehrliche  Kant,  the  plain,  honest,  honourable  Kant. 


GIFFOIID   LECTUEE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

The  three  degrees,  positive,  comparative,  superlative  in  negation 
of  the  proofs,  or  Hume,  Kant,  Darwin — Tht  Life  and  J. 
of  Charles  Darwin,  chapter  viii.  of  the  first  volume — Darwin 
one  of  the  Lest  of  men — Design — Uniformity  and  law — Darwin's 
own  words — He  himself  always  gentle— Bui  resolute  to  win — • 
—  Concessiveness  Religious  sentiment  —  Disbelief-  Job 
Natural  selection  being,  materialism  is  true,  and  ideas  are  only 
derivative  —  The  theory  —  A  species  what  -Sterility — What 
suggested  natural  selection  to  Darwin — Bakewell'a  achievements 
as  a  breeder — Darwin  will  substitute  nature  for  Bakewell,  to 
the  production,  not  of  new  breeds,  but,  absolutely,  of  new 
species — His  lever  to  this,  change  by  natural  accident  and 
chance:    such    necessarily   proving    either    advai  dis- 

advantageous, or  indifferent — Advantagt  securing  in  the  struggle 
for  life  survival  of  the  fittest,  disadvantagt  entailing  death  and 
destruction,  indifferenci  being  out  of  count — The  woodp 
the  misletoe— Bui  mere  variation  the  very  fulcrum — Variation 
must  be,  and  consequences  to  the  organism  must  be:  hence  the 
whole  —  But  never  design,  only  a  mechanical  pullulation  of 
differences  by  chance  that  simply  prove  advantageous  or  dis- 
advantageous, etc.— Conditions— Mr.  Huxley  —  Effect  of  the 
announcements  of  sir  Joseph  Hooker  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell — 
Mr.  Darwin  insists  ou  his  originality  —  His  difficulties  in 
winning  his  way  Even  those  who  agree  with  him,  as  Lyell. 
Hooker,  and  others,  he  demur-  to  their  expressions  :  they  fail  to 
understand — Mr.  Darwin's  own  qualms — " What  makes  a  tuft 
of  feathers  come  on  a  cock's  head,  or  moss  on  a  moss-rose  J" — 
That  the  question  Still  spontaneous  variation  both  uni\ 
and  constant. 

In  regard  to  the  negative  on  the  question  of  the  proofs 
for  the  being  of  a  God,  having  now  passed  through  what 
we  name  the  positive  and  comparative  degrees  of  it   as 


324  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

found  respectively  in  the  writings  of  David  Hume  and 
Immanuel  Kant,  we  have  reached  at  length  the  similarly 
conditioned  superlative  degree  in  so  far  as  it  is  represented, 
on  the  whole,  that  is,  by  the  views  of  the  celebrated 
Charles  Darwin.  In  chapter  viii.  of  the  first  volume 
of  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  a  chapter 
which  bears  to  inform  us  in  regard  to  the  religious  views 
of  Mr.  Darwin,  and  which  is  actually  entitled  "  Religion," 
I  think  we  shall  easily  find  abundant  evidence  to  prove 
that  this  distinguished  naturalist,  especially  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  came  greatly  to  doubt  of  the  existence  of 
a  God  at  all.  I  should  not  find  it  difficult  in  this 
reference,  then,  to  paint  a  picture  which  should  exhibit 
the  original  of  it  in  a  form  and  colouring  still  very  odious 
to  the  great  majority  of  the  English-speaking  populations 
anywhere.  His  absolute  want  of  sympathy  at  last  with 
all  in  nature  and  in  art  which  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
regarding  as  appealing  to  what  is  highest,  or  to  what  is 
deepest  and  divinest  in  the  soul  of  man— that  might  be 
taken  advantage  of,  and,  according  to  ability,  worked  up 
into  a  representation,  or  misrepresentation,  which  should 
actually  revolt.  But  I,  for  my  part,  have  not  the 
slightest  inclination  for  the  daubing — it  would  be  only 
that — of  any  such  caricature.  I  know  that,  if  a  man 
has  long  accustomed  his  thoughts  exclusively  to  run  in  a 
single,  special,  and  peculiar  groove — I  know,  I  say,  that 
then  all  other  grooves  become  distasteful  to  him.  In 
many  such  grooves — -for  many  such  grooves,  he  may  have 
been  enthusiastic  once.  He  does  not  value  tliein  the 
less  now ;  but,  in  the  intensity  of  his  devotion  to  the  one, 
he  has  ceased  to  be  susceptible  of  the  interest  which  it 
surprises,  disappoints,  disturbs  him  to  find  he  no  longer 
possesses  for  the  others.  This  is  a  state  of  mind  which, 
in  regard  of  intellectual  working,  we  may  expect  to  meet, 
after  a  time,  even  in  the   best   of  men.     And    Charles 


DARWIN  ONE  OF  THE  BEST  OF  MEN.  325 

Darwin  was  one  of  the  best  of  men.  As  son,  brother, 
husband,  father,  friend,  as  servant  or  master,  as  simple 
citizen,  that  man  was,  as  is  well  possible  here,  perfect. 
It  is  to  be  understood,  then,  that,  if  I  have  to  refer  at 
any  time  to  Mr.  Darwin's  religious  opinions,  I  do  so  only 
in  the  regard  that  my  subject  compels.  That  subject  at 
present  is,  specially,  the  negative  of  the  proofs  for  the 
being  of  a  God,  and  in  Mr.  Darwin's  reference,  that 
negative  is  secluded  and  confined  to  the  argument  from 
design.  To  this  argument  his  peculiar  theory  is  fatal ; 
and  Mr.  Darwin  himself  is  not  only  aware  of  this,  but  in 
express  terms  acknowledges  it.  And  that  for  me  is 
enough,  that  for  me  is  all.  I  have  to  do  with  Mr. 
Darwin  in  this  respect  alone.  I  know  that  in  regard  to 
the  theory  in  question — Natural  Selection — there  are  in 
existence  all  manner  of  views — I  know  that  there  are 
those  to  whom  this  theory  has  extended  the  satisfaction 
and  consolation  of  universal  uniformity  and  enlightened 
law  ;  but  with  these  views  or  representations  of  views,  I 
have,  in  any  way  whatever,  no  call  to  intromit.  In  fact, 
I  may  say  at  once  in  regard  to  uniformity,  that  it  is  not 
its  presence,  but  its  absence,  that  I  find  in  the  theory  of 
Mr.  Darwin.  He  who  does  not  see — who  does  not  know 
and  proclaim  that  this  world  is  dependent  on  ideas,  is 
hung  on  ideas,  is  instinct  with  ideas — he  to  me  has  no 
true  word  to  say  for  uniformity.  I  refuse  to  acknow- 
ledge uniformity  in  mere  matter  that  is  figured  in  mere 
mechanical  play  from  beyond  the  Magellan  clouds  to 
within  the  indivisible  unit  of  every  living  soul.  My 
uniformity  is  the  uniformity,  not  of  matter,  but  of  mind  ; 
and  that  is  the  uniformity  which  I  precisely  fail  to  find 
in  the  theory  of  Mr.  Darwin.  He  himself,  as  I  say, 
acknowledges  this.  He  doubts  the  existence  of  God  ;  he 
denies  design.  What  I  have  first  to  do  here,  then,  is  to 
lead  evidence  in  proof  of  the  allegations  made.     So  far 


326  GIFFORD  LECTUEE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

as  these   allegations   concern  design,  that  is  the   direct 
interest ;  in  other  respects  they  concern  only  an  indirect 
implication    in   consequence   of   necessary   quotation.      I 
desire  Mr.  Darwin  to  be  regarded  only  with  respect — or, 
in  truth  and  sincerity,  only  with  love.      It  was  in  this 
spirit   that,   in    the   first    place  here,   I    contemplated  a 
psychological  inquiry,  not  only  into  the  life  and  character 
of  Mr.  Darwin  himself,  but  into  those  of  his  father,  and 
specially  of  his  grandfather,  the  celebrated  Dr.  Erasmus 
Darwin  of  Zoonomia  and  the  Botanic  Garden.     In  these 
references  I  collected  largely.      I  ransacked  the  two  lives 
of  Dr.  Erasmus,  that  of  Miss   Seward  and  that  of  Ernst 
Krause,  as  also  that  remarkable  book  of  Miss  Meteyard's, 
A    Group  of  Englishmen,   in    which    we   are   introduced 
to    the    enormous    bulk    of    Mr.   Darwin's    father,   "  the 
largest  man  whom  "  the  son  "  ever  saw,"  "  about  six  feet 
two  inches   in  height,   with   broad    shoulders   and  very 
corpulent,"    "  twenty-four    stone    in    weight,    when    last 
weighed,  but  afterwards  much  heavier,"  a  man  represented 
by  Miss  Meteyard  as  "  eating  a  goose  for  his  dinner  as 
easily   as  other  men   do    a    partridge."     Charles    denies 
this :  we  must   be   cautious   in   receiving  such  reports  ; 
others,  he  says,  "  describe  his  father  as  eating  remarkably 
little."     Evidently  that  goose  is  not  to  the  stomach  of  the 
family.     I  read  and  made  large  extracts  also  from   the 
various  works  of  Dr.  Erasmus,  from  the  Zoonomia  and 
the  Botanic  Garden.    And  it  is  possible  that  were  I  to  apply 
all  the  material  collected,  I  might  be  able  to  realize  some 
not  altogether   uninteresting  psychological   characteriza- 
tion which  might  even  have  its  bearing  on  the  peculiar 
theories  of  the  son  and  grandson  ;  but  this  would  lead  me 
much  too  far  at  present,  and  I  am  reluctantly  compelled  to 
turn  to  what  my  space  alone  allows  me,  the  theory  itself 
of  Charles  Darwin,  and  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  design. 
On  that  last  head,  design,  we  have  it  in  our  power  to 


mr.  darwin's  own  expressions.  327 

.adduce  in  evidence  a  great  variety  of  expressions  of  Mr. 
.Darwin's  own.  Such  expressions  are  principally  bo  be 
found  in  the  letters  to  Mr.  Asa  Gray,  and  in  the  chapter 
entitled  "  Keligion,"  which  occur  in  the  work  already 
referred  to.  From  the  latter,  the  eighth  chapter,  namely, 
of  the  first  volume,  I  quote,  for  example,  this:  "The 
old  argument  from  design  in  Nature  .  .  .  fails,  now  that 
the  law  of  natural  selection  has  been  discovered  .  .  . 
There  seems  to  be  no  more  design  in  the  variability  of 
organic  beings  .  .  .  than  in  the  course  which  the  wind 
blows."  Now,  these  are  only  a  few  words ;  but  they  are 
unmistakable.  They  are  crucial  as  to  this,  That,  to  Mr. 
Darwin,  there  is  no  more  design  in  organic  variation, 
than  in  the  course  of  the  wind,  That,  consequently,  the 
argument  from  design  fails,  ami  That  this  failure  of  said 
argument  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  law  of  natural 
selection.  By  implication  we  see  that  Mr.  Darwin's 
general  doctrine  is  this,  The  varied  organizations  in 
nature  are  due,  not  to  design,  but  to  natural  selection  : 
or,  as  we  may  put  it  reverse-wise,  natural  selection 
accounts  for  all  organic  variation  in  nature,  and  any 
reference  to  a  so-called  principle  of  design  is  unwarranted, 
groundless,  and  gratuitous.  Of  course  it  cannot  be  said 
that  Mr.  Darwin  exactly  triumphs  in  this  supposed 
destruction  of  the  argument  from  design.  Air.  Dai  win 
is  a  most  amiable  man.  He  was  ever  courteous  in 
expression — whether  by  letter  or  by  word  of  mouth — 
almost  to  a  fault ;  "  he  naturally  shrank,"  as  his  son 
says,  "  from  wounding  the  sensibilities  of  others  in 
religious  matters."  So  it  is  that  in  his  letters  to  Asa 
Gray — an  earnest-minded  man — all  thai  he  has  to  say 
on  design  is  mitigated  ever  by  gentle  words  in  regard  to 
theology.  With  respect  "to  the  theological  view  of  the 
question.  This,"  he  says,  "  is  always  painful  to  me.  I  am 
bewildered.     I  had  no  intention  to    write  atheistically. 


328  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

But  I  own  that  I  cannot  see  as  plainly  as  others  do,  and 
as  I  should  wish  to  do,  evidence  of  design  and  beneficence 
on  all  sides  of  us.  ...  I  am  inclined  to  look  at  every- 
thing as  resulting  from  designed  laws,1  with  the  details, 
whether  good  or  bad,  left  to  the  working  out  of  what  we 
may  call  chance."  It  is  ever  thus  in  meek  conciliant 
vein  he  writes  concessively  to  all  his  intimate  friends, — 
even  to  Hooker  and  to  Lyell,  who  were  his  most  intimate. 
An  element  in  this  was,  of  course,  the  desire  that  was 
ever  present  to  him  of  winning  his  way  for  his  theory 
into  the  conviction  of  his  correspondents,  and  of  softening 
the  opposition  which  he  constantly  encountered  from 
them.  It  is  rather  amusing  to  watch  his  shrewd 
manoeuvres  in  this  reference  both  with  Hooker  and 
Lyell,  especially  the  latter,  whom  he  is  always  reminding 
of  his  own  eminence  and  of  his  own  teaching  in  his 
geology !  At  times  he  even  gets  humorously  cross  with 
his  own  self  when  consciousness  of  this  his  concessive 
attitude  has  come  upon  him,  as  in  reference  to  his  having 
"put  in  the  possibility  of  the  Galapagos  having  been 
continuously  joined  to  America,"  though,  "  in  fact  con- 
vinced, more  than  in  any  other  case  of  other  islands, 
that  the  Galapagos  had  never  been  so  joined."  At 
such  instance  of  concessiveness  as  this,  I  say,  he  gets 
humorously  cross  with  himself,  and  exclaims,  "  It  was 
mere  base  subservience  and  terror  of  Hooker  &  Co." 
With  all  softness  of  expression,  however,  Mr.  Darwin's 
candour  is  never  for  a  moment  in  doubt.  He  says  him- 
self that  he  "  does  not  think  that  the  religious  sentiment 

1  "  Designed  laws  :  "  Mr.  Darwin  has  just  denied  design  ;  there  is 
no  law  for  Mr.  Darwin,  but  natural  law,  as  of  "  the  course  of  the 
wind," — natural  mechanics  !  The  "  working  out "  of  the  law,  "  good 
or  bad,"  is  left  indifferently  to  "  chance."  The  word  is  the  inadvert- 
ence for  the  moment  of  unpremeditated  writing ;— or  is  Mr.  Darwin 
in  it  only  conciliant  to  Mr.  Asa  Gray  1 


THE  THEORY.  320 

was  ever  strongly  developed  in  him ; "  and  he  writes 
with  perfectly  conscious  unreserve  of  his  unbelief  in   a 

revelation  whether  of  or  hy  God, — writes  quite  jokingly 
at  times,  indeed,  with  reference  to  articles  of  faith  and 
the  priests  that  teach  them.  But  it  is  only  in  what 
regards  design  that  there  is  any  interest  in  Mr.  Darwin 
for  us  at  presenl  ;  and  we  are  happily  spared  here,  con- 
sequently, all  citation  and  any  further  reference  to  the 
subject  of  religion,  so  far  as  Mr.  Darwin  is  concerned. 

The  result  before  which  we  stand  now,  then,  is  this  : 
If  natural  selection  is  true,  design  is  false.  That,  at 
least,  is  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Darwin  ;  and  Mr.  Darwin 
it  was  who,  in  regard  to  natural  selection,  first  made 
current  the  phrase  and  held  valid  the  doctrine.  Evi- 
dently, then,  Mr.  Darwin  being  right,  our  whole  enter- 
prise is  brought  to  a  very  short  issue.  There  is  an  end 
to  the  whole  interest  of  Natural  Theology — an  end  to  all 
our  relative  declamation — an  end  to  all  our  arguments  for 
the  existence  of  God,  in  so  far,  namely,  as,  to  the  general 
belief  of  the  modern  world,  all  these  arguments  con- 
centrate themselves  in  design.  Design,  namely,  is  the 
product  of  ideas;  but  there  can  be  no  ideas  to  begin  with 
on  the  footing  of  natural  selection.  Natural  select  inn 
being  true,  ideas  are  not  producers,  but  produced.  What 
alone  results  in  that  case  is  that  materialism  is  all,  and 
that  ideas  only  issue  from  the  order  and  arrangement 
which  things  themselves  simply  fall  into.  The  immediate 
question  that  presses  on  us,  consequently,  is,  What  is 
natural  selection?  And  for  an  answer  to  this  question  1 
confine  myself  to  the  same  work  already  spoken  of — 
The  Life  ami  Letters.  I  am  not  unacquainted  with  the 
other  relative  writings  of  Mr.  Darwin:  but  I  find  no 
answers  to  all  my  questions  in  these  references  so  simple 
and  direct  as  those  suggested  in  the  three  volumes  of 
the  book  I  have  named 


330  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

Now,  to  say  it  all  in  a  word,  the  theory  is  this  : 
Every  organism  has  varieties ;  of  which  varieties  certain 
examples  being  selected,  settle  into  longevity,  as  it  were 
or  into  quasi  -  permanence  as  species.  Species,  so  far, 
are  but  long-lived  varieties ;  and  the  question  is,  To  con- 
stitute a  species,  is  that  enough — is  longevity  enough  ? 
What,  in  fact,  is  it  that  does  constitute  a  species,  or 
what  is  the  ensemble  of  qualities  that  is  proper  to,  and 
distinctive  of,  a  species ;  what  is  the  definition  of  a 
species?  Now  here,  according  to  Mr.  Darwin  (ii.  88), 
"  it  is  really  laughable  to  see  what  different  ideas  are 
prominent  in  various  naturalists'  minds  when  they  speak 
of  species ;  in  some,  resemblance  is  everything,  and 
descent  of  little  weight ;  in  some,  resemblance  seems  to 
go  for  nothing,  and  creation  the  reigning  idea ;  in  some, 
descent  is  the  key;  in  some,  sterility  an  unfailing  test ;  with 
others,  it  is  not  worth  a  farthing.  It  all  comes,  I  believe, 
from  trying  to  define  the  undefinable."  A  species,  then, 
would  appear  from  this  to  be  undefinable  to  Mr.  Darwin  ; 
so  much  so  that  he  can  afford  to  laugh  at  his  coadjutors 
and  fellow-workers.  When  we  turn  in  upon  him,  how- 
ever, actually  engaged  in  the  work  of  determining  for 
himself  a  species,  we  find  Mr.  Darwin  not  by  any  means 
in  a  laughing  humour.  He  tells  his  friend  Hooker  (ii. 
40)  that,  "  after  describing  a  set  of  forms  as  distinct 
species,  tearing  up  my  MS.,  and  making  them  one 
species ;  tearing  that  up,  and  making  them  separate ; 
and  then  making  them  one  again  (which  has  happened 
to  me),  I  have  gnashed  my  teeth,  cursed  species,  and 
asked  what  sin  I  had  committed  to  be  so  punished  ! " 
Plainly,  if  we  have  first  of  all  to  make  out  for  ourselves 
what  the  thing  that  is  to  originate  is,  we  have  our  own 
difficulties  before  us.  Nevertheless,  from  the  various 
definers  laughed  at  by  Mr.  Darwin,  we  may  gather  a  list 
of  what  qualities  are,  on  the  whole,  considered  as  more  or 
less  specific  ;  and  they  are  these — Eesemblance,  Descent, 


A  SPECIES.  331 

Creation,  and  Sterility.  Creation  we  may  dismi 
almost  constituting  precisely  the  single  point  that  happens 
to  be  in  question  ;  Mr.  Darwin,  that  is,  holds  Bpecies  doI 
to  he  created,  hut  to  develop  the  one  from  the  other. 
Of  the  other  characters  named,  we  may  assume  Mr. 
Darwin  to  allow  resemblance  and  to  accentuate  descent, 
but  to  deny  sterility.  Of  this  last — sterility — Mr.  1  tarwin 
holds  that  neither  sterility  nor  fertility  affords  any  certain 
distinction  between  species  and  varieties  (Origin,  237). 
I  fancy,  however,  on  this  head,  thai  we  shall  very  pro- 
bably hit  the  truth  should  we  say  that  sterility  is,  after 
all,  the  rule,  and  that  Mr.  Darwin's  conclusion,  being  in  his 
own  favour  otherwise,  is  only  plausibly  supported  on  mere 
exceptions  and  consequent  superficial  discrepancies  (some- 
what exaggerated)  between  authorities.  "What  I  mean  by 
the  accentuated  descent  is  Mr.  Darwin's  peculiarity — 
the  peculiarity  of  opinion,  namely,  that  there  is  descent 
from  species,  not  only  of  separate  individuals  and 
separate  varieties,  but  also  of  other  and  separate  species. 
That  is  what  is  meant  by  the  "  Origin  of  Species  by 
means  of  Natural  Selection."  Eow  Mr.  Darwin  was 
to  his  peculiarity  in  this  respect  he  tells  us  again  and 
again  himself.  "  All  my  notions,"  he  says  (ii.  79  i.  "  about 
how  species  change  are  derived  from  long-continued  study  of 
the  works  of  (and  converse  with)  agriculturists  and  horti- 
culturists ;  and  I  believe  I  see  my  way  pretty  clearly  on  the 
means  used  by  Nature  to  change  her  species  and  u,ln ^,t  them 
to  the  wondrous  and  exquisitely  beautiful  contingencies  to 
which  every  living  being  is  exposed."  Of  what  is  meant 
by  the  "  change  "  referred  to  here,  as  concerns  first  its 
artificial  side  (the  action  of  the  breeders),  he  speaks  else- 
where (ii.  122)  thus:  "Man,  by  this  power  of  accumu- 
lating variations,  adapts  living  beings  to  his  wants;  he 
may  be  said  to  make  tin1  wool  of  one  sheep  good  for 
carpets  and  another  for  cloth,"  etc.  It  is  the  celebrated 
Eobert  Bakewell  of  Dishley,  and  the  means  by  which 


3o2  GIFFORD  LECTUPtE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

he  arrived  at  his  wonderfully  improved  breeds  of  domestic 
animals — sheep,  oxen,  horses — that  are  here  specially  in 
allusion.  Having  observed  that  the  young  of  animals 
are  almost  quite  like  their  parents  in  qualities,  he  was 
led  to  infer  that,  if  care  were  taken  only  suitably  to  pair, 
the  result  would  be  a  breed  uniting  in  itself  whatever 
qualities  should  be  the  most  desirable.  Accordingly,  it 
was  in  this  way  that  he  came  to  effect  all  those  modifica- 
tions in  the  families  of  the  domestic  animals  which  are 
now  so  well  known.  Mr.  Darwin,  then,  intimates  further 
here,  on  the  natural  side,  that  he  himself,  by  example  of 
Bakewell,  was  led  to  place,  instead  of  Bakewell,  nature  as 
a  breeder,1  with  the  result  that  he  names  natural  selection. 
For  the  genesis  of  the  idea  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Darwin, 
that  is  the  important  point ;  and  this  genesis  will  be  full 
and  complete  if  we  only  add  two  other  less  important 
and  subordinate  points.  These  are — 1.  the  Galapagos 
Archipelago,  and,  2.  the  book  of  Malthus  on  population. 
In  those  altogether  lonely,  singular,  and  peculiar  Gala- 
pagos Islands,  namely,  he  thought  he  had  caught  nature 
in  the  very  act  of  originating  species ;  and  by  Malthus 
there  was  suggested  to  him  the  Struggle  for  Existence. 
This  phrase,  we  may  add,  afterwards  led  of  itself  to  the 
further  phrase  Survival  of  the  Fittest.  So  far,  then,  we 
see  that  Mr.  Darwin  was  minded  to  discover  in  nature 
such  operations  upon  animals  as  were  exemplified  by  man 
in  his  artificial  breeds ;  and  that  he  had  accordingly  come 
to  see  that  the  means  to  these  operations  was  the 
Struggle  for  Life  that  eventuated  in  the  Survival  of  the 
Fittest.      How  the  struggle  acted  was  his  ultimate  con- 

1  To  Mr.  Darwin,  however,  nature  simply  reverses  Bakewell.  He 
exaggerates  similarity  ;  she  exaggerates  difference — literally  that ! 
Neither  is  there  any  "  struggle  "  to  Bakewell,  hut  again  the  reverse. 
Man's  operations,  then,  and  those  of  nature  are  not  "  exemplified  " 
the  one  in  the  other.  One  would  like  to  see  nature  pairing  for 
improvement  of  breed ! 


his  leveb.  333 

Bideration;  and  the  agent  in  result  was  variously  named 
by  him  divergence,  difference,  modification,  variation,  etc. 
It  was  on  this  difference,  or  through  this  difference,  that 

Nature  operated  her  selection.  Rather,  in  fact,  it  was 
the  difference  operated  the  m  on   nature,  and  nol 

nature  on  the  difference.  "When  advantageous,  that  is, 
the  difference  did  itself  enable  the  organism  to  take  a 

new  departure  in  nature,  to  rise  a  step,  to  seize  itself  of 
a  new  and  higher  level  in  existence,  a  new  and  better 
habitat,  a  new  and  better  food,  a  new  and  better  attack, 
a  new  and  better  defence,  etc.  All  this  is  precisely  what 
is  meant  by  Mr.  Darwin  when  he  says  (i.  84):  "The 
modified  offspring  of  all  dominant  and  increasing  forms 
tend  to  become  adapted  to  many  and  highly-diversified 
places  in  the  economy  of  nature."  To  the  ^mw  effeel 
Mr.  Darwin  says  more  fully  elsewhere  (ii  124):  "I  can- 
not doubt  that  during  millions  of  generations  individuals 
of  a  species  will  lie  born  with  some  slight  variation  pro- 
fitable to  some  part  of  its  economy.  Such  will  have  a 
better  chance  of  surviving,  propagating  this  variation, 
which,  again,  will  be  slowly  increased  by  the  accumula- 
tive action  of  natural  selection;  and  the  variety  thus 
formed  will  either  coexist  with  or,  more  commonly,  will 
extirpate  its  parent  form.  An  organic  being  like  the 
woodpecker  or  the  mistletoe  may  thus  conic  to  be 
adapted  to  a  score  of  contingencies,  natural  selection 
accumulating  those  slight  variations  in  all  parts  of  its 
structure  which  are  in  any  way  useful  to  it  during  any 
part  of  its  life."  These  are  Mr.  Darwin's  own  words; 
and  his  scheme  is  really  at  full  and  entire  in  them. 
Still  it  may  be  brought  considerably  more  dearly  home 
to  us,  if  we  will  but  pay  a  little  separate  attention  to  its 
constitutive  parts.  The  one  great  point  in  the  whole, 
however,  is  the  variation.  That  is  the  single  hingi 
which  the  entire  fabric  turns.  That  is  the  cue  for  nat- 
ural  selection   to   interfere;   that,  and  that   alone,  is  the 


334  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

source  of  the  material  that  enables  natural  selection  to 
succeed.      Now   that    is  a    very   simple   affair;    there  is 
neither  complication  nor  mystery  in  it.      All  organisms 
are  variable  ;  and  all  organisms  do  vary.     The  interest 
is  therefore  that  into  which  at  any  time  the  variation  is 
made.     That  may  be  a  mere  slight  increase  of  something 
already  there ;  some  mere  slight  change  of  shape ;  some 
mere   slight   change  of  direction    even.      Or   it   may  be 
some  initial  new  streak,  some  initial  new  caruncle,  nodule, 
tubercle,  alto  relievo  or  basso  relievo,  some  mere  dimple 
or  some  mere  lip,  some  mere  initial  crease,  fold,  pucker — 
si  Due    mere  stain  even.      But  whatever  it  be,  there   are 
necessarily  the  rudiments  of  advantage  or  disadvantage  in 
it ;  and  whatever  it  be,  there  is  a  tendency  for  it  to  be 
propagated.      It  is  inherited  by  the  progeny  of  whatever 
organism    we    may    suppose    to    have     been    suscipient 
(sufferer  or  beneficiary)  of  the  change ;  nay,  not  only  in- 
herited, but  inherited  with  increase  and  with  tendency 
of  increase.      Should  it  be  a  dimple,  a  basso  relievo,  for 
example,  it  may  grow  into   a  hollow   that  should  hold 
water,  and  as  joint  on  the  stem  of  a  plant  prevent  the 
ascent  of  the  insect  that  would  plunder  its  nectary.      Or 
should  it  be  a  tubercle,  a  nodule,  an  alto  relievo,  it  may 
become  in  the  end  a  new  fibril,  a  new  tentacle,  a  new 
tendril,  an  actual  new  organ  to  increase  of  the  security, 
to  increase  of  the  nourishment  and  support  of  the  plant. 
I  say  in  the  end  ;  and  that  end  may  be  reached  only  by 
a    long  gradation,   only   by   an   accumulation  of  slowly 
successive,   almost  insensible  steps — really  insensible,  if 
only  looked  at  from  day  to  day.     What  is  alone  con- 
cerned  is   this,  that  there  shall   be  a  change,  and  that 
that  change  shall  tell  upon  the  life  of  the  organism.      If 
it    tell  at  all,    then,   through  propagation,   it    can  only 
tell  with  increase.      But,  with  such  telling  gradation  of 
change  fairly  conceived,  we  can  be  at  no  loss  to  conceive 
also  the  process  carried  out  on  this  side  and  on  that  into 


CONDITIONS.  335 

organisms  eventually  so  changed,  that,  compared  with 
their  antecedents  or  originals,  they  cannot  be  denied  to 
be  new  species.  Assume  the  change  to  be  one  of  advant- 
age, then  the  accumulation  of  necessarily  increasing 
differences  can  only  end  in  the  production  of  a  new- 
creature.  Mr.  Darwin  is  resolute  in  his  adherence 
to  this,  that  there  shall  be  no  design  from  elsewhere 
— that  the  whole  appearance  of  contrivance  and  con- 
struction shall  be  due  to  nothing  else  whatever  than, 
so  to  speak,  to  tins  mechanical  pullulation  of  differences, 
that  can  only  end  in  such  mechanical  accumulation  as 
can  be  only  tantamount  to  a  new  species.  Of  course, 
it  is  plant  life,  animal  life,  that  so  pullulates  or  develops  ; 
and  it  is  not  denied  that  lift-  may  be  more  than 
mechanism.  But  still,  as  in  life,  the  process  hen 
only  be  called  mechanical.  We  only  assume  it  to  be 
certain  that  organisms  do  vary,  and  quite  as  certain 
that  any  variation  they  present  is  in  the  first  instance 
no  more  than  an  accident — a  simple  appearance  oi 
chance.  Even  the  influence  of  conditions  is  not  to 
be  taken  into  account:  the  same  organism  may  exist 
under  any  conditions  whatever,  from  the  north  to  the 
south,  or  from  the  east  to  the  west.  Conditions  or  no 
conditions,  it  is  the  appearance  of  difference  alone  that  is 
crucial — difference  into  advantage,  and  accumulation  of 
difference  into  advantage,  until  by  mere  process  of  nat- 
ural eventiiation  of  steps  the  old  has  become  new — out  of 
one  species  another  has  been  evolved  This,  whatever 
maybe  said,  is  the  genuine  Darwin.  Mr.  Darwin  has 
been  much  impressed  by  the  progress  of  physical  science 
— by  the  enormous  revolution  in  it  which  the  discovery 
of  one  law — the  attraction  of  gravity — has  accomplished, 
and  it  would  rejoice  his  heart  to  introduce  a  like  natural 
simplification  into  the  process  of  organic  change.  As 
primal  condition  of  the  realization  of  this  process,  Mr. 
Darwin  expressly  excludes  (ii.  170  s.)  any  necessity   to 


336  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

presuppose  an  aboriginal  "  power  of  adaptation "  or 
"  principle  of  improvement  ; "  it  is  enough  that  there 
be  granted  "  only  diversified  variability."  And  "  so,"  he 
says,  "  under  nature  any  slight  modification  which  chances 
to  arise,  and  is  useful  to  any  creature,  is  selected  or  pre- 
served in  the  struggle  for  life."  To  Mr.  Darwin,  the 
slight  modification  only  "  chances  "  to  arise — chances  in 
italics !  This  one  passage  is  decisive ;  but  there  are 
many  such.  He  says  once  to  Lyell,  for  instance :  "  No 
change  will  ever  be  effected  till  a  variation  in  the  habits 
or  structure,  or  of  both,  chance  to  occur  in  the  right 
direction,  so  as  to  give  the  organism  in  cpuestion  an 
advantage  over  other  already  established  occupants  of 
land  or  water ;  and  this  may  be,  in  any  particular  case, 
indefinitely  long."  And  the  word  chance  is  again  under- 
lined. To  Hooker,  too,  he  speaks  in  the  same  conviction. 
"  The  formation  of  a  strong  variety,  or  species,"  he  says 
(ii.  87),  "  I  look  at  as  almost  wholly  due  to  the  selection 
of  what  may  be  incorrectly  called  chance  variations  or 
variability  ;  "  and  again  he  italicizes  chance.  The  adverb 
'•  incorrectly,"  namely,  is  only  added  under  the  influence 
of  common  parlance.1  The  physical,  natural  changes,  that 
are  the  groundwork  of  the  theory,  are  to  him — as  physical, 
natural — results  of  mere  mechanical  play  that  may  be 
named  chance,  or,  as  he  says  elsewhere,  accident.  His  one 
desire,  indeed,  is  to  keep  this  chance,  this  accident,  pure. 
Under  it  alone  he  would  see  a  difference  arise  for  a 
consequent  series  of  differences,  by  propagation,  heredity, 
to  accumulate.  So  it  is  that  he  manifests  most  un- 
mistakably, and  almost  everywhere,  a  rooted  disinclination 
to  consider  any  diversity  in  organisms  as  the  result  of  an 
alteration  in  external  conditions.  Courtesy  was  the  very 
nature  of  Mr.  Darwin  ;  and  under  its  leading  he  goes 
always   so   far  as   ever   he    can  in  agreement   with  his 

1  "Incorrectly"  here  is  pretty  well  as  "designed"  on  p.  328 — 
see  note. 


CONDITIONS.  337 

various  correspondents.  In  a  letter  to  Herr  Moritz 
Wagner,  for  example,  who  seems  to  have  accentuated 
conditions,  "  I  wish  I  could  believe/'  he  says  with  all 
gentleness, — "I  wish  I  could  believe  in  this  doctrine  (the 
agency  of  changed  conditions),  as  it  removes  many  diffi- 
culties." Even  here,  however,  his  wish  for,  is  followed 
by  his  objections  to.  No  doubt,  Herr  Wagner  is  not  the 
only  correspondent  to  whom  there  may  be  some  polite 
expression  of  favour,  more  or  less,  for  conditions ;  but 
even  within  a  year  of  his  death,  in  writing  to  Profi 
Semper  with  reference  to  Professor  Hoffmann's  experiments 
in  discredit  of  conditions,  he  ventures  to  tell  the  former, 
— "  I  thought  you  attributed  too  much  weight  to  the 
direct  action  of  the  environment; — changed  conditions 
act,  in  most  cases,  in  a  very  indirect  manner."  Else- 
where in  these  letters,  when  he  judges  his  correspondent 
to  be  with  him,  there  is  to  be  found  quite  a  superfluity 
of  expressions  unexceptively  averse  to  the  belief  in 
conditions.  To  Hooker,  for  example,  he  says  once, 
"  The  conclusion  I  have  come  to  ...  is  that  external 
conditions  (to  which  naturalists  so  often  appeal)  do  by 
themselves  very  little;"  and  this  very  little  is  an  itali- 
cized very  little.  On  another  occasion  he  finds  "  the 
common  notion  absurd  that  climate,  food,  etc.,  should 
make  a  pediculus  formed  to  climb  hair,  or  woodpecker 
to  climb  trees."  "  I  quite  agree  with  what  you  say 
about  the  little  direct  influence  of  climate,"  he  e 
quite  glad  to  tell  Hooker  at  another  time.  To  Thomas 
Davidson,  again,  he  courteously  and  concessively  admits, 
"I  oscillate  much  on  this  head;"  still  he  takes  heart 
to  intimate  that  he  "generally  returns  to  his  belief  that 
the  direct  action  of  the  conditions  of  life  has  not  been 
great."  To  Lyell,  he  throws  oil'  every  rag  of  reserve, 
and  actually  swears.  "  I  feel  inclined  to  swear  at 
climate"  (ii.  174),  he  says;  ''no  error  is  more  mis- 
chievous than  this"  (ii.  169)  ;  and  again,  "  It  has  taken 

Y 


338  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

me  so  many  years  to  disabuse  my  mind  of  the  too  great 
importance  of  climate  that  I  am  inclined  to  swear  at  the 
North  Pole,  and,  as  Sydney  Smith  said,  '  even  to  speak 
disrespectfully  of  the  Equator  ; '  "  and  then  he  bids  Lyell 
reflect  how  "  readily  acclimatization  is  effected  under 
nature  " — how  "  thousands  of  plants  can  perfectly  well 
withstand  a  little  more  heat  and  cold,  a  little  more 
damp  and  dry,"  etc.  As  all  inorganic  phenomena  are 
under  the  law  of  physical  gravitation,  so  Mr.  Darwin 
would  wish  all  organic  phenomena  to  prove  under  the 
law  of  mere  physical  variation.  So  it  is  that  he  dislikes 
all  reference  to  conditions.  It  is  very  natural  that  one, 
for  a  time,  should  fail  to  see  this  in  Mr.  Darwin ;  for 
the  influence  of  conditions  is  so  glaringly  conspicuous, 
so  palpably  indispensable  indeed,  that  it  takes  long 
to  be  prepared  for  their  denial.  Nevertheless,  it  is  ob- 
vious from  these  quotations — and  they  might  be  largely 
augmented — that  he  who  insists  on  conditions  as  ele- 
ments in  the  construction  of  an  organism,  cannot  be 
in  agreement  with,  but  is  in  opposition  to,  Mr.  Darwin. 
And  it  is  here  that  Mr.  Huxley  puts  us  to  some  difficulty 
— not  for  his  opinions,  but  only  in  his  use  of  the  phrase 
"external  conditions."  As  regards  the  1844  Essay,  for 
example,  he  points  out  to  Mr.  Darwin's  son  that  in 
it  "  much  more  weight  is  attached  to  the  influence  of 
external  conditions  in  producing  variation,  and  to  the 
inheritance  of  acquired  habits,  than  in  the  Origin ; " 
while  to  Mr.  Darwin  himself  he  had,  after  reading  his 
book  in  1859,  remarked, — and  the  remark  is  the  second 
of  the  only  two  objections  that  have  occurred  to  him, — 
"  it  is  not  clear  to  me  why,  if  continual  physical  con- 
ditions are  of  so  little  moment  as  you  suppose,  variation 
should  occur  at  all"  (ii.  231).  Mr.  Huxley,  from  these 
quotations,  had  evidently  observed  that  Mr.  Darwin  put 
little  moment  on  physical  conditions,  and  that  this  ten- 
dency on  his  part  was  stronger  on  a  later  occasion  than 


MR.  HUXLEY.  339 

on  an  earlier.  Evidently,  also,  Mr.  Huxley  was  so  far  in 
disagreement  with  Mr.  Darwin.  It  cannot  be  so  far, 
then,  that  we  mean  Mr.  Hnxley  to  have  put  us  to 
any  relative  difficulty.  No;  the  reference  in  that  case 
is  to  a  passage  in  Mr.  Huxley's  writing,  just  of  the  other 
day,  which  (Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  vol  ii. 
p.  195)  runs  thus:  "The  suggestion  that  new  species 
may  result  from  the  selective  action  of  external  con- 
ditions upon  the  variations  from  their  specific  type  which 
individuals  present — and  which  we  call  'spontaneous,' 
because  we  are  ignorant  of  their  causation — that  sug- 
gestion is  the  central  idea  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  and 
contains  the  quintessence  of  Darwinism."  Here  "  ex- 
ternal conditions,"  as  we  see,  have  become  the  very 
motor,  and  agent,  and  source,  and  spring  of  Darwinism  ; 
and  they  do  give  difficulty,  if  they  arc  to  be  supposed 
the  same  as  before.  But  they  are  not  to  be  so  supposed 
— they  are  not  the  same  as  before.  No,  very  far  from 
that  !  The  conditions  then  were  supposed  to  precede  the 
variation  :  the  conditions  now  are  supposed  to  follow  it. 
Or,  while  the  former  were  the  conditions  that  brought 
about  the  variation,  the  latter,  again,  are  those  that  only 
take  advantage  of  it.  The  first  set  of  conditions  were 
those  of  climate, — heat  and  cold,  damp  and  dry, — food,  etc. 
What  the  second  set  refers  to — quite  otherwise — are 
the  increased  means  of  nourishment,  support,  slicker, 
security,  which  have  been  already  described  as  the 
advantages  on  the  part  of  nature,  pictured  in  the  theory, 
to  be  consequent  upon  the  variation.  As  was  said  then: 
It  is  on  the  variation  that  Nature  operates  her  selection  ; 
or,  as  it  may  be  otherwise  conceived,  the  selection  is 
operated  on  nature,  by  the,  variation.  Now,  that  is  the 
whole  meaning  of  Mr.  Huxley  in  the  apparently  dis- 
crepant usage  of  the  phrase  "external  conditions,"  in  his 
respective  passage  that  has  just  been  quoted.  Further, 
as  we  may  allow  ourselves   to  note,  when,  in  the   same 


340  G1FFOKD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

passage,  Mr.  Huxley  calls  the  variation  "  spontaneous," 
there  can  be  no  hesitation  in  acknowledging  that  he 
is  absolutely  correct  in  asserting  the  single  suggestion 
he  has  in  view  to  be  the  central  idea,  and  to  constitute 
the  quintessence  of  Darwinism  :  the  suggestion,  namely, 
that  new  species  may  result  from  such  and  such  selective 
action  on  such  and  such  individual  variation.  A  variation 
occurs  spontaneously  in  an  organism ;  and  it  is  followed 
up  by  a  selective  action  on  (or  through)  the  conditions  in 
its  environment.  These  are  the  conditions  Mr.  Huxley 
means  now ;  and  that  to  him,  as  it  is  to  us,  is  the  whole 
idea  of  Darwinism — the  quintessence  of  Darwinism — 
the  centre,  and  the  soul,  and  the  very  self  of  Darwinism. 
For  the  sake  of  clearness,  I  may  just  point  out  here  a 
third  set  of  external  conditions.  The  "  attraction  of 
gravity,"  namely,  "  light,"  etc.,  which  Mr.  Darwin  names 
in  connection  with  the  "  power  of  movement "  in  plants, 
are  quite  entitled  to  the  same  designation ;  but,  however 
relevant  as  referred  to,  they  are  not  to  be  regarded  as 
elements  in  the  Darwinian  construction. 

We  may  return  now  to  this,  that,  in  their  first  sense, 
Mr.  Huxley  disagreed  with  Mr.  Darwin  as  to  the  action 
of  external  conditions  in  respect  of  variations  in  in- 
dividual organisms — disagreed  so  widely,  indeed,  that  it 
was  not  clear  to  him  (Huxley)  "  how,  without  continual 
physical  conditions,  variation  should  occur  at  all."  Con- 
fusion in  regard  to  the  various  sets  of  conditions  is 
not  to  be  thought  of  when  these  words  were  written. 
There  must,  at  that  time,  have  been  points  of  serious 
disagreement  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Huxley  with  the  views 
of  Mr.  Darwin.  It  is  Mr.  Darwin  himself  who  writes 
to  Mr.  Huxley  in  1860  (ii.  354):  "This  makes  me 
feel  a  little  disappointed  that  you  are  not  inclined  to 
think  the  general  view  in  some  slight  degree  more 
probable  than  you  did  at  first.  This  I  consider  rather 
ominous.     I  entirely  agree  with  you  that  the  difficulties 


EFFECT  ON  THE  PUBLIC — HOOKER  AND  LYELL.        341 

on  my  notions  are  terrific."  Nor,  if  it  was  so  with  Mr 
Huxley,  was  it  in  any  respect  better — rather,  was  it 
not  worse? — with  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell, 
who,  as  the  confidants  of  Mr.  Darwin,  had,  on  various 
public  occasions,  been  the  means  of  trumpeting  the  story 
of  our  long-tailed  or  four-footed  ancestors  to  an  astonished 
world,  which  could  but  breathlessly  rush  to  see  and 
to  know  ?  Mr.  Darwin  will  have  it  (i.  87),  that  it  was 
not,  "  as  it  has  been  sometimes  said,  that  the  success 
of  the  Origin  proved  '  that  the  subject  was  in  the  air,' 
or  '  that  men's  minds  were  prepared  for  it.'  I  do  not 
think  that  this  is  strictly  true,"  he  says,  "  for  I  occasion- 
ally sounded  not  a  few  naturalists,  and  never  happened 
to  come  across  a  single  one  who  seemed  to  doubt  about 
the  permanence  of  species.  Even  Lyell  and  Hooker, 
though  they  would  listen  with  interest  to  me,  never 
seemed  to  agree."  Of  Lyell  he  had  already  written  to 
Dr.  Asa  Gray  in  1863,  "  You  speak  of  Lyell  as  a 
judge ;  now  what  I  complain  of  is  that  be  declines  to 
be  a  judge.  I  have  sometimes  almost  wished  that  Lyell 
had  pronounced  against  me."  To  Lyell  himself,  too,  he 
writes  (ii.  300),  "It  is  a  great  blow  to  me  that  you 
cannot  admit  the  potency  of  natural  selection  ; "  and 
again,  "  I  grieve  to  see  you  hint  at  the  creation  of 
distinct  successive  types,  as  well  as  of  distinct  aboriginal 
types."  To  the  same  Gray  he  avows  also,  "  You  never 
say  a  word  or  use  an  epithet  which  does  not  express 
fully  my  meaning.  Now  Lyell,  Hooker,  and  others,  who 
perfectly  understand  my  book,  yet  sometimes  use  ex- 
pressions to  which  I  demur."  It  is  to  be  feared  that  even 
this  Dr.  Asa  Gray,  who  never  said  a  discrepant,  word, 
was  pretty  much,  for  all  that,  in  the  same  state  of  mind 
as  Hooker  and  Lyell.  Mr.  Darwin,  himself,  in  the  very 
next  paragrapli  of  the  very  same  letter,  can  only  say 
of  him,  "I  yet  hope,  and  almost  believe,  thai  the  time 
will  come  when  you  will  go  farther,  in  believing  a  very 


342  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  SEVENTEENTH. 

large  amount  of  modification  of  species,  than  you  did 
at  first,  or  do  now.  Can  you  tell  me  whether  you 
believe  further,  or  more  firmly,  than  you  did  at  first  ?  " 
It  is  quite  touchingly  suggestive  of  the  situation,  and 
quite  pathetic,  to  hear  Mr.  Darwin,  so  painfully,  simply 
in  earnest,  follow  up  his  question  by,  "  I  should  really 
like  to  know  this  ! "  Mr.  Darwin,  indeed,  must  have 
occasionally  suffered  dreadfully  at  this  time  from  dis- 
trust, and  mistrust,  and  want  of  confidence  in  the  sound- 
ness and  cogency  of  what  he  had  so  much  his  heart 
in.  He  tells  Asa  Gray  of  the  thought  of  the  eye  making 
him  "  cold  all  over."  Nay,  he  says,  "  the  sight  of  a 
feather  in  a  peacock's  tail,  whenever  I  gaze  at  it,  makes 
me  sick  !  "  It  is  in  much  the  same  mood  of  mind,  or 
with  the  same  problem  before  him,  that  he  cries  out  once 
to  Huxley,  "  If,  as  I  must  think,  external  conditions  pro- 
duce little  direct  effect,  what  the  devil  determines  each 
particular  variation  ?  What  makes  a  tuft  of  feathers 
come  on  a  cock's  head,  or  moss  on  a  moss-rose  ?  " 

For  us,  from  such  expressions  as  these,  we  are  brought 
very  close  to  the  question  as  Mr.  Darwin  sees  it.  There 
is  no  formed  difference  that  he  would  not  like  to  account 
for;  and  he  does  not  always  see  his  way  to  this  in 
a  start  from  certain  rudimentary  or  initial  spontaneous 
differences,  which  his  theory  obliges  him  to  assume. 
"  I  believe,"  he  says,  "  most  beings  vary  at  all  times 
enough  for  selection  to  act  on," — that  is,  he  means,  as  it 
were,  and  as  Mr.  Huxley  directly  says,  "  spontaneously  " 
vary.  Hence  advantage  and  disadvantage  in  the  struggle 
for  life,  with  the  necessary  survival  of  the  fittest. 

We  have  thus  broken  ground  on  the  views  of  Mr.  Dar- 
win, and  will  be  already  able  to  judge,  in  some  degree,  of 
the  relation  which,  according  to  Mr.  Darwin  himself,  these 
views  bear  to  the  argument  from  design  ;  and  that  alone  is 
the  consideration  which  interests  us  here.  We  must  con- 
tinue the  subject  with,  I  hope,  a  closer  approach  in  our  next. 


G1FF0KD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

The  theory — Individual  variation — Darwin  early  looked  for  natural 
explanation  of  design-  Creation,  it-  senses  Antisthenes,  Cole- 
brooke,  Cudworth  —  Creative  Ideas — Anaxagoras  Aristotle 
Mr.  ('lair  Grece  and  Darwin — For  design  Mr.  Darwin  offers  a 
mechanical  pullulation  of  individual  difference  through  chance, 
but  with  consequent  results  that  as  advantageous  or  disadvanl 
ous  seem  concerted — Tin-  Fathers—  Nature  the  phenomenon  of 
the  noumenon,  a  boundless  externality  of  contingency  that  still 
i^  a  life — Nature,  the  object  will  only  /»  when  it  reaches  the 
subject — That  object  be,  or  subject  be,  hoth  must  be-  Even  the 
crassest  material  particle  is  already  both  elementarily — As  ii 
were,  even  inorganic  matter  possesses  instincts  Aristotle,  d< 
and  necessity  Internalization — Time  space,  motion,  matter — 
The  world  —  Contingency  —  A  perspective  of  pictures  The 
Vestiges  and  evolution  —  Darwin  deprecates  genealogies,  but 
returns  to  them — The  mud-fish — Initial  proteine  T.  ire  so 
many  mouths  to  eat  it  up  now— Darwin  recants  his  pentateuchal 
concession  to  creation — Depends  on  "fanciers  and  breeders" — 
The  infinitudes  of  transition  just  taken  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  a  Btep 
— Hypothesis — Illustration  at  random — Difference  would  go  on 
to  difference,  not  return  to  the  identity — Mr.  Lewes  and  Dr. 
Erasmus — The  grandfather's  filament  -  Seals— The  bear  and  the 
whale— Dr.  Erasmus  on  the  imagination,  on  weeping,  on  fear, 
on  the  tadpole's  tail,  on  the  rationale  of  strabismus. 

We  have  now  reached  something  of  an  insight  into  the 

theorem  or  theory  of  Mr.  Darwin.  1  know  not  that  it 
can  l»e  hotter  put  titan  as  we  have  seen  it  put,  in  his 
own  clear  way,  by  Mr.  Huxley.  "The  suggestion,"  he 
says,  "that  new  species  may  result  from  the  selective 
action  of  external  conditions  upon  the  variations  from 
their  specific  type  which  individuals  present,  and  which 


344  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

we  call  '  spontaneous,'  because  we  are  ignorant  of  their 
causation  —  that     suggestion    is     the    central     idea     of 
the   Origin  of  Species,  and  contains  the  quintessence  of 
Darwinism."      Perhaps  we  might  object  to  the    phrase 
"  variations  from  their    specific    type "   as  insufficiently 
exact.      Variation  from  specific  type,  we  might  say,  has 
already  achieved  the  whole  problem — at  a  word  !      If 
there  is  spontaneous  variation  from  the  specific  type — 
if  that  is  a  fact,  then  "the  selective  action  of  external 
conditions  "  seems  supererogatory,  seems  to  have  nothing 
left  for  it  to  do :  what  was  wanted  is  already  accom- 
plished.    A    variation    from    the    Specific    type,  a    new 
creature,  is  already  there ;  and  we  are  just  simply  ignor- 
ant of  its  causation.      Mr.  Darwin  himself  does  not  con- 
ceive the  first  variation  to  be  more  than  an  individual 
variation    (children   only    individually  vary    from   their 
parents) — he  does  not  conceive  it  to  be  by  any  means 
a    specific   variation — a   variation   at   once    into   a    new 
creature.      Specific  variation,  a  new  creature,  is  to  Mr. 
Darwin    only     the    result — perhaps    after    millions    of 
generations — of  the  eventual  accumulation,  by  inherit- 
ance,   of   an  indefinite — almost  of  an  infinite — number 
of  individual  differences.     So  much  importance,  indeed, 
does  Mr.  Darwin  attach  to  the  first  individual  difference, 
to  the  very  first  initial  modification  as  the  absolutely  first 
step  in  the    process,  and  the  consequent  divergence  of 
character  from  the  gradual  accumulation  of  steps,  modi- 
fications, that  he  would  almost  consent  to  withdraw  the 
phrase  natural  selection.     "  Compared  to  the  question  of 
Creation  or    Modification,"  he  says  (ii.   371),  "Natural 
Selection  seems  to  me  utterly  unimportant."      And  that 
brings  us  to  the  question  that  is   between  Mr.  Darwin 
and  ourselves — the  question  of  design,  namely.      Early  in 
life  Mr.  Darwin's  father  "  proposed  that  he  should  be- 
come a  clergyman,"  and  he  himself  in  the  first  instance 


CREATION  Or  .MODIFICATION.  345 

was  nothing  loath.  He  was  "  heartily  laughed  at  too," 
he  says,  "  by  several  of  the  officers  of  the  Beagk  foT 
quoting  the  Bible."  Nevertheless,  he  seems,  still  early 
in  life,  to  have  taken  an  antipathy  to  creation  as  the 
explanation  of  the  adaptations  and  contrivances  he  saw 

in  organic  life.     How  was  the  w ipecker,  for  instance, 

so  wonderfully  formed  for  the  climbing  of  trees,  he  asked 
himself;  and  he  could  not  at  all  quiet  himself  by  the 
answer,  it  has  been  just  so  made.  That  was  a  super- 
natural explanation,  and  he  for  his  part  could  only  be 
satisfied  with  a  natural  cue.  If  all  that  is  //(organic  is 
absolutely  determined  by  natural  law,  why  should  not 
all  that  is  organic  be  similarly  determined  ?  And  so,  as 
I  have  just  quoted,  he  came  to  his  idea  of  "modification," 
on  which  as  a  principle  of  explanation  he  took  his  stand, 
in  opposition  to,  and  supersedure  of,  "creation."  That 
was  the  colour  he  definitely  nailed  to  his  mast  — 
"  Creation  or  Modification."  And  his  or  here  is  an 
italicized  or;  for  to  Mr.  Darwin  there  could  In'  110 
other  or.  In  fact,  to  the  general  crowd  of  naturalists  at 
this  moment  it  would  appeal  thai  there  can  be — rather 
that  there  is,  no  other  or,  no  other  alternative  whatever, 
than  "creation  or  modification."  A  good  deal  depends 
here,  however,  on  what  sense  is  to  be  given  to  "  creation." 
Antisthenes  must  have  believed  snails  and  locusts  to  have 
been  mere  products  of  the  earth  ;  for  Diogenes  Laertius 
reports  him  to  have  called  the  Athenians  no  Letter  than 
such  low  spawn  when  they  bragged  of  being  earth-born. 
The  Indian  philosophers,  too,  according  to  Colebrooke, 
held  the  "  spontaneous  generation  of  worms,  nits,  maggots, 
una ts,  and  other  vermin."  Then  Ralph  Cudworth  was 
undoubtedly  a  most  devout,  sincere,  ami  pious  Christian  : 
but  he  seems  to  have  felt  it  such  an  indignity  to  Cod  to 
hold  that  "God  Himself  doth  all  immediately;  and,  as  it 
were,  with   His  own   hands  form  the   body  ^i  every  ;_ri:at 


346  GIFFOBD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

and  fly,  insect  and  mite,"  that  he  invented,  and  extended 
as  medium  between  God  and  the  world,  what  is  known 
to  all  students  as  his  "  Plastic  Nature."  This  Cudworth 
describes,  not  as  "  the  divine,  not  archetypal,  but  only 
ectypal,"  as  "  reason  immersed  and  plunged  into  matter, 
and,  as  it  were,  fuddled  in  it  and  confounded  with  it." 
We  see,  then,  from  this  what  sense  Ealph  Cudworth  gave 
to  creation.  And  I  at  least  am  so  far  of  his  mind  that 
I  as  little  believe  God  to  have  put  hand  to  gnat  or  fly, 
insect  or  mite,  as  I  believe  Him  to  have  manufactured, 
quarried,  or  mason-like  made,  the  little  bare  rock  on  the 
top  of  Arthur's  Seat.  But,  again,  in  the  other  direction, 
I  am  absolutely  of  the  same  mind  with  Cudworth  in 
regard  to  ideas.  To  him  "  knowledge  is  older  than  all 
sensible  things ;  vovs,  nous  is  senior  to  the  world,  and 
the  architect  thereof."  Since  Anaxagoras,  it  will  be 
within  recollection,  that  is  the  view  that  has  been  argued 
in  these  lectures  ;  and  since  Aristotle  design  has  been  the 
name  of  our  conviction.  "  It  is  better  to  be  than  not  to 
be,"  says  Aristotle,  "  and  nature  always  strives  to  the 
better"  (336b);  "it  is  not  the  wood  that  makes  the 
bed,  but  the  skill  ;  and  it  is  not  wTater  itself  that  makes 
out  of  itself  an  animal,  but  nature"  (335).  Anaxagoras 
was,  as  we  know,  nicknamed  vov<i ;  and  with  quite  as 
much  reason  the  boys  and  girls  of  Athens  might  have 
cried  after  Aristotle,  eve/ca  ov,  eveicd  rov,  reXos,  t€\o<;)  all 
of  which  words  mean  design.  Mr.  Darwin,  I  repeat,  never 
made  a  greater  mistake  in  his  life  than  when  he  allowed 
Mr.  Clair  Grece's  translation  to  make  him  believe  that 
Aristotle,  like  himself,  was  above  design  and  all  for 
natural  necessity  on  chance.  As  I  say,  Aristotle  might 
have  been  as  appropriately  called  Design,  as  Anaxagoras 
was  called  Mind ;  and  even  much  more  appropriately, 
for  Aristotle,  unlike  Anaxagoras,  was  true  to  his 
principles  throughout ;  design  was  his  first  word  and  his 


<  i;i:atiye  IDEAS.  .">4  7 

last.  Now,  it  is  in  consequence  of  just  such  a  belief  in 
design  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  bo  accept  the  theory 
which  Mr.  Darwin  offers  as  in  lieu  of  it.  Mr.  Darwin, 
for  his  part,  has  no  such  belief,  and  he  offers  us,  instead, 
a  mechanical  pullulation  of  individual  difference  which  is 
to  eventuate  in  all  the  beautiful  and  complicated  forms, 
whether  of  plant  or  animal,  which  we  see  around  us. 
We  have  seen  that  it  was  the  alternative  of  "  creation  " 
or  "modification"  thai  determined  him  to  this.  Others 
might  call  in  the  supernatural,  the  god  from  the  machine, 
if  they  liked;  he,  for  his  part,  would  only  have  the  usual 
at  work,  lie  would  see  all  these  fine  adaptations  just 
naturally  inflect  themselves.  He  had  only  one  sense  for 
"  creation,"  and  apparently  it  was  only  the  crass,  common, 
literal  one  of  a  workman  turning  something  out  of  hand. 
As  we  have  seen  also,  Cudworth,  to  say  nothing  oi 
Antisthenes  and  the  Indians,  could  not  away  with  this 
conception,  hut  felt  under  a  necessity  to  interpose  a 
plastic  nature  between  God  and  the  world.  For  their 
parts,  the  most  and  greatest  of  the  Fathers,  clement  of 
Alexandria,  Origen,  Athanasius,  Basil,  Hilary,  and 
especially  Augustine,  believed  that  the  world  was  called 
into  existence  even  as  by  a  wish  ;  and  in  this  way,  handi- 
work there  was  none.  To  a  certain  extent  that  illus- 
trates what  we  may  call  perhaps  the  true  or  correct  idea  in 
the  immediate  reference.  Nature  is  bul  the  phenomenon 
of  the  noumenon,  the  many  of  the  one,  the  externale  of  the 
internale,  thrown  down  from  the  unity  of  reasoned  co- 
articulation  and  connectedness — thrown  down  and  abroad 
into  the  infinitude  of  a  disunited,  disconnected,  and  dis- 
articulated inorganic  chaos,  which,  however,  turns  upon 
-turns  upon  itself  tor  restoration  and  return  to  the 
image  from  which  it  fell.  Nature  is  not  dead,  nature  is 
a  life,  and,  if  all  unconsciously  to  itself,  it  has  still  an 
aim  in  view.      "It  is   better  to   be  than  not    to   be,"  says 


348  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

Aristotle;  and  so,  as  I  take  it,  it  is,  that  what  is,  is. 
And  if  it  is  for  the  better  that  what  is,  is,  so  it  is  that 
this  same  better  is  never  lost  sight  of.  "  We  say  that 
nature,"  as  is  the  expression  of  this  same  Aristotle, 
"  always  in  all  things  strives  —  opeyeaOcu  —  reaches, 
stretches  out  hands  to  the  better."  In  a  word,  nature  would 
articulate  itself,  nature  would  see,  nature  would  be  seen 
— nay,  at  the  last,  nature  would  see  its  own  self.  Nature 
with  all  its  rocks  and  seas  and  mountains,  with  all  its 
suns  and  moons  and  planets,  with  all  its  vast  star- 
systems  and  all  its  immensity  of  space  and  all  its 
infinitude  of  time,  would  be — if  only  that  —  no  more 
than  the  blackness  and  silence  of  a  point — no  more  than 
the  blackness  and  silence  of  an  all-indefinite  point.  But 
nature  would  not  remain  that — nature  would  be — nature 
would  be  a  universe — a  marvellous  crystal  universe,  with 
an  eye  to  see  it,  and  an  ear  to  hear  it. .  The  object  would 
be  the  subject ;  and  then  only,  first  of  all,  would  itself 
be  —  then  only  first  of  all  would  the  object  be  the 
object — then  only  first  of  all  would  it  be  even  an 
object.  Nature  must  have  a  man  to  make  it  even 
nature — object  must  have  subject  to  make  it  even 
object.  Alone,  unseen,  the  Bayadere  of  the  universe 
will  not  even  dance.  Now  the  subject  is  what  hears 
and  sees  and  thinks,  while  the  object  is  what  is  heard 
and  seen  and  thought ;  and  that  there  be,  just  that 
anything  be — that  there  be  anything,  both  must  be.  But 
it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  there  is  only  such  union  to 
be  found  when  we  come  to  find  ourselves,  when  we  come 
to  find  a  man.  The  mud  of  the  river,  the  sand  by  the 
sea,  the  very  dust  beneath  our  feet,  is  at  once  both. 
Were  it  not  so,  it  would  be  naught,  nothing ;  it  would 
disappear — it  would  be  incognizable  of  us.  That  it  is 
cognizable  of  us  depends  upon  this,  that  it  is  already  a 
concretion  of  categories,  a  complexion  of  thoughts.     As 


THE  INORGANIC  has  INSTINCTS. 

you  may  wash  away  all  colour  from  B  clot  of  blood,  and 
be  left  at  last  with  a  pun-  transparent  ultimate,  a  pure 
transparent  web  which  held  the  colour,  so  you  may 
discharge  materiature  from  any  particle  of  dust,  or  sand, 
or  mud,  and  be  left  at  last  with  a  pure  diamond  of 
fibres  intellectual.  No  particle  of  dust,  or  .-and,  or  mud 
but  is  there  in  quantity,  and  quality,  and  measure,  in 
substance  and  accident,  in  matter  and  form,  and  in  quite 
a  congeries  of  many  other  cat  In  this  way  one 
can  see  that  it  may  be  said  that  even  inorganic  matter 
possesses  instincts.  Not  dog  alone,  or  rat  or  cat,  or  bee 
or  swallow,  is  endowed  with  instinct,  but  even  the  rucks, 
and  stones,  and  all  the  materials  around  them.  The 
lower  animals  to  Mr.  Darwin,  as  lie  says,  "  3eem  to  have 
the  very  same  attributes  in  a  much  lowei  I  per- 
fection than  the  Lowest  Bavage"  <ii.  2  1  1  >.  To  him,  that 
is,  there  is  an  intellectual  gradation  from  the  lowest 
animal  to  the  highest  man.  Still  he  calls  it  "a  strange 
view  of  instinct,  and  wholly  false/1  that  would  "n 
intelligence  as  a  developed  instinct."  That,  however, 
must  arise  from  Mr.  Darwin's  peculiarity  to  look  upon 
instinct  as  only  an  inherited  habit.  Most  people  mean 
by  instinct  the  whole  thinking  faculty  of  an  animal,  bo 
far  as  it  has  a  thinking  faculty  at  all.  It  is  in  the  same 
way  that  Aristotle,  though  lie  say-  that  "God  and  nature 
do  nothing  in  vain,"  yet  assigns  to  nature  no  divine 
quality,  hut  only  one  that  is  daemonic,  acting  on  un- 
conscious motive,  even  as  we  might  conceive  \\ 1  to  act, 

did  it  make  out  of  itself  a  boal  or  a  bed;  fur  nature's 
ends  are  wrought  out  blindly  and  without  reflection 
Nevertheless,  even  so  working,  nature,  continues  Aristotle, 
.  affords  inexpressible  delight  to  those  who  are 
ahle  to  discover  causes, and  are  philosophers  by  nati 

not    hut    that,  a-    lie   >a\>   eNewheie,   677al6— ,    "-' 

is  not  always  to  he  looked  tor,  inasmuch  a-,  certain  things 


350  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

being  such  as  they  are,  many  others  follow  from  them 
through  necessity."  This  operation  of  necessity,  as  we 
see,  is  what  Mr.  Darwin  alone  trusts  to,  and  under  its 
iron  feet,  unlike  Aristotle,  he  would  annihilate  design. 
But  alone  the  consideration  gives  pause  to  that — the 
consideration,  what  would  the  whole  universe  be,  did  it 
not  attain  to  an  eye  that  would  look  at  it,  to  an  ear 
that  would  listen  to  it  ?  To  that  co-articulation  of 
mutual  necessities  it  is  impossible  for  any  thinking 
being  to  conceive  of  chance  as  the  cause.  As  we  saw, 
it  is  better  to  be  than  not  to  be,  and  so  there  is ;  but 
if  there  is,  then  there  is  both  object  and  subject.  Either 
without  the  other  were  a  blank  ;  either  without  the  other 
were  in  vain.  In  order  that  anything  be,  there  must 
both  be.  No  one  can  look  at  nature,  even  as  it  is  there 
before  our  eyes,  without  acknowledging  that  what  it 
shows  everywhere  is  the  rise  from  lowest  object  up  to 
highest  subject.  Science  has  already  divided  this  rise, 
and  made  of  it  a  succession  of  terraces,  of  which  any  one 
is  already  more  reasonable  than  its  predecessor.  To  take 
this  succession  and  progression  from  below  upwards  is, 
as  it  were,  a  reversal  of  emanation,  a  sort  of  retrograde 
emanation,  and  the  only  truth,  perhaps,  of  that  whole 
doctrine.  We  have  first  utmost  space  and  furthest  time, 
and  then  motion  and  the  moved  merely — the  moved 
merely,  matter,  namely,  that,  as  space  is  externality 
outwards,  has  already  commenced  to  be  externality 
inwards,  and  so  approached  the  subject,  as  it  were, 
individually  and  from  within ;  while  motion,  that  has 
thrown  the  whole  into  the  unity  of  law  and  system — 
astral  system — is  the  same  approach,  as  it  were,  uni- 
versally and  from  without.  Nay,  earlier  still,  we  may 
place  the  beginning  of  the  approach.  Space  in  itself  is 
manifestly  the  externale  as  the  externale ;  it  is  exter- 
nality pure  and  simple,  externality  as  such  ;  it  is  always 


SPACE TIME. 

out  and  out  endlessly,  it  is  never  in  and  in.     And  it  lies 

there  motionless  a  motionless,  infinite  Out.     Tl. 

no  pure  internal  framework  there  as  in  the  clot  of  blood, 

no  hidden  categorical  nucleolus  of  ideas  as  in  material 
particles.      Yet,  even  as  these  particles  have  categories, 

space  has,  as  its  soul,  time.      -  -    in   the  clnf 

time:  in  each  moment  of  time  the  whole  infinitude  of 
space  at  once  is:  no  moment  of  time  but  is  at  once 
everywhere.  Is  it  nut  strange  just  to  think  of  tl 
that  even  the  perishable  moment  of  time  is,  as  every- 
where in  space,  at  once  infinite.'  And  yet  for  us  to 
count  the  infinitude  of  space,  we  Bhould  require  the 
eternity   of   time.     Evidently,  whatever   t:  they 

must  both  go  together;  time  and     -  ire  a  concrete, 

<if  which  the  one  is  the  discretion  ami  tin-  other  the 
continuity.  But  the  universe,  in  that  it  holds  of  the 
infinite  and  absolute,  is  independent  of  either.  X-  one 
can  say  where  the  world  exists,  nor  when — it  is  above 
any  where  or  any  when:  it  is  its  own  there  and  then, 
and  everywhere,  and  at  once,  and  always.  As  we  have 
said,  it  is  the  phenomenon  of  the  noumenon  ;  and  as 
everywhere  the  turn  and  return  of  the  out  to  the  in,  it 
makes  confession  of  its  origin.  Even  in  the  finite  there 
is  rise  of  the  object  into  the  subject,  and  science  tells 
us  of  it — in  astronomy,  and  geology,  ami  botany,  and 
zoology,  and  man.  The  whole  effort  of  nature  in  its 
zoology  is  to  get  to  man:  and  it  is  a  Ion-  ascent  : 
to  him.  through  sponge  and  mollusc,  fish  and  reptile, 
bird  and  beast  Nature,  all  the  time,  is  in  no  hurry  or 
haste,  however,  but  spreads  itself  out,  in  its  contingency 
in  millions  ami  millions  of  indifferent  shapes  which,  never- 
theless, collect  and  gather  themselves  in  their  contingency 
to  the  rounds  and  rungs  of  their  ladder  in  its  rise. 
Nature  scatters  its  living  products  abroad,  as  the  sea  its 
shells  upon  the  strand.      Contingency   is   the   word;    he 


352  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

that  cannot  put  himself  at  home  with  contingency  as 
philosophically  understood,  will  never  philosophize  this 
world.  Mr.  Darwin's  inherited  individual  differences 
will  never  prove  a  match  for  the  contingency  that  is. 
Mr.  Darwin  had  the  richest  memory  of  anecdotes  in 
nature  of  any  man  that  ever  lived,  and,  with  an  even 
infinite  conjectural  ingenuity,  he  carried  every  anecdote 
to  its  purpose  in  the  march.  But  what  these  anecdotes 
were  to  illustrate  or  establish  was,  in  the  first  instance, 
this.  Mr.  Darwin  said  to  himself,  Children  resemble 
their  parents  ;  but  they  also  differ  from  them.  Evidently, 
therefore,  they  are  as  likely  to  propagate  differences  as 
to  propagate  resemblances ;  for  the  fact  of  propagation, 
the  fact  of  inheritance,  is  to  be  admitted,  is  simply  to  be 
named.  Now,  any  given  difference  may  be  an  advantage, 
or  it  may  be  a  disadvantage.  That  is,  the  animal,  by 
reason  of  the  difference  propagated  and  inherited,  may  be 
obstructed  in  the  exercise  of  its  functions  and  the  use  of 
its  conditions  ;  or,  in  all  these  respects,  it  may  be  fur- 
thered. The  ultimate  of  obstruction  can  only  be  ex- 
tinction. But,  in  the  case  of  furtherance,  inasmuch  as 
furtherance  only  encourages  furtherance,  ever  the  more 
and  the  more,  say  for  incalculable  periods,  the  ultimate 
can  only  be  something  perfectly  new — can  only  be  a  new 
organism,  in  fact,  that  is  tantamount  to  a  new  species. 
Now  observe  how,  all  this  time,  and  even  as  I  have  been 
using  the  words — observe  how  we  have  all  passed  through 
a  long,  fascinating,  and  most  natural-seeming  perspective. 
We  have  all,  in  imagination,  cpuite  pleasedly,  and  without 
a  rub  or  a  check,  assisted  actually  at  a  new  birth. 
We  could  not  help  ourselves.  Seeing  that  inherited 
difference  going  incalculably  on  and  on,  we  felt  involun- 
tarily minded  to  admit  any  intermediate  metamorphosis 
with  any  terminal  result  whatever.  We  heard  words 
which  gave  us  a  picture  in  imagination ;   and  we  sub- 


THE  vestiges,  353 

mitted  to  them.  Nothing  can  be  more  plausible  than 
an  incalculable  lime  ;  aothing  can  be  more  plausible  khan 
an  infinite  series  of  infinitely  small  numbers— h< 
infinitely  small  differences  that  gradually  pass  into  one 
another.  It  belongs  to  the  human  mind  to  picture  an 
endless  time, — an  endless  continuity, — and  then  break  it 
up  into  an  endless  number  of  points — an  endless  number 
of  discretes.  We  yield  to  the  plausibility  of  all  this, 
then,  I  say;  we  yield  and — we  are  lost.  But,  consider, 
is  it  a  fact  that  length  of  time  will  of  itself  account  for 
anything  ?  Is  it  a  fact  that  we  must  allow  the  capability 
of  insensible  degrees  to  account  for  any  change  whatever  '. 
Given  a  thing  that  is  granted  to  vary,  surely  we  may  see 
it  in  imagination  vary  into  anything  whatever — should 
there  further  be  granted  any  number  of  insensible  degrees 
and  any  length  of  time  we  may  wish.  Such  conditions 
must  prove  irresistible  to  any  imagination  that  has  not 
prepared  and  fortified  itself  for  opposition  in  advance. 
Our  possible  mental  pictures  have  really  a  most  potent 
effect  upon  us,  but  a  new  species,  made  by  man,  or  made 
by  nature,  has  it  been  ever  proved  $  Followers  of  Mr. 
Darwin  have  been  asked,  Is  it  at  all  conceivable  that  any 
length  of  time,  or  that  any  insensible  degrees,  would 
ever  convert  a  canary  into  an  elephant,  or  a  bee  into  a 
bull?  And  followers  of  Mr.  Darwin  have  always  turned 
upon  the  questioner  with  contempt  for  his  ignorance,  and 
indignation  for  his  injustice.  Did  lie  not  know  that  'Sir. 
Darwin  ever  poured  scorn  on  all  such  questions  ?  Even 
in  the  case  of  a.  man  so  eminent  as  Dr.  Robert  Chambers, 
and  of  a  book  so  justly  authoritative  as  the  Vestiges,  did 
not  Mr.  Darwin  find  "the  idea  of  a  fish  passing  into  a 
reptile,  monstrous"?  Did  not  such  things  amuse  him 
in  the  greal  geologisl  Sir  Roderick  Impey  Murchison  \ 
and  did  it  not  give  him  "a  cold  shudder  (ii.  334)  to  hear 
of   any  one" — Professor  Parsons   it   was — "speculating 

z 


354  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

about  a  true  crustacean  giving  birth  to  a  true  fish  ? 
How  very  different  his  own  ideas  of  genealogy  were,  we 
may  understand  from  this.  "  We  might  give  to  a  bird  the 
habits  of  a  mammal,"  he  says  (ii.  335),  "but  inheritance 
would  retain  almost  for  eternity  some  of  the  bird-like 
structure,  and  prevent  a  new  creature  ranking  as  a 
mammal."  That  is,  a  bird,  even  though  it  had  already 
the  habits  of  a  mammal,  would  remain  bird-like,  and 
never,  in  all  eternity,  rise  to  the  rank  of  a  mammal. 
Fish,  amphibians,  reptiles,  birds,  mammals,  must  have 
had,  for  each  of  them  as  a  class,  their  one  "necessary 
and  peculiar  progenitor,  having  a  character  like  the 
embryo "  of  an  individual  of  each  of  them.  It  is  Mr. 
Darwin's  own  declaration  always,  "  We  must  imagine  " — 
he  does  not  say  discover — "  we  must  imagine  some  form 
as  intermediate — I  cannot  conceive  (ii.  335)  any  existing 
reptile  being  converted  into  a  mammal."  It  is  gross 
ignorance,  then,  to  hear  enemies  of  Mr.  Darwin  courage- 
ously maintain  that  they,  for  their  parts,  had  never  come 
from  a  cow,  just  as  though  Mr.  Darwin  had  ever  said 
that !  This  is  something  like  those  enemies  of  Berkleian- 
ism  who  attribute  to  Berkeley  the  direct  communication 
on  the  part  of  God  to  man  of  every  possible  absurd 
particular,  whereas  Berkeley  has  no  thought  in  his  mind 
but  of  communication  on  the  part  of  God  to  man  of  this 
whole  orderly,  law-regulated,  systematized  universe.  Such 
caricaturists  in  objections  are  to  be  found  in  opposition 
to  every  new  truth.  As  there  were  those  who  told 
Berkeley  to  knock  his  head  against  a  lamp-post,  so  there 
are  those  who  tell  Mr.  Darwin  they  did  not  come  from 
a  cow !  Well,  then,  I  suppose  we  may  grant  that,  as  on 
the  part  of  the  friends  of  Mr.  Darwin,  to  be  all  right. 
It  is  gross  ignorance  to  say  that  Mr.  Darwin  ever  holds 
us  to  come  from  a  cow,  or  can  be  construed  into  so 
holding.      When  Mr.  Darwin  called  "  the  idea  of  a  fish 


CENEALOGIES THE  MUD-FISH.  3oo 

passing  into  a  reptile,  monstrous,"  he  also  i 
declared,  as  for  his  own  part,  "  /  will  not  specify  any 
genealogies — much  too  little  known  at  present."  We 
see,  however,  that  Mr.  Darwin's  knowledge  must  have 
very  sensibly  increased,  for  we  are  in  his  debt  in  tin-  end 
for  several  genealogies.  He  is  quite  confident  at  last, 
for  example,  that  the  early  progenitor  of  man  was  a 
catarhine  monkey  covered  with  hair,  its  ears  pointed  and 
capable  of  movement,  its  foot  prehensile,  its  body  pro- 
vided with  a  tail,  and  it  habits  arboreal  (Descent  of  Mia n, 
155-60).  At  an  earlier  period  he  says,  "  Owr  ancestor 
was  an  animal  which  breathed  water,  had  a  swim  bladder, 
a  great  swimming  tail,  an  imperfect  skull,  and  undoubt- 
edly was  a  hermaphrodite!"  (ii.  266).  Mr.  Darwin  is 
so  sure  of  his  affair  here  thai  he  can  say  "  undoubtedly." 
Of  course  we,  for  our  parts,  are  accordingly  impressed  ; 
but  if  Mr.  Darwin  had  said,  "Our  ancestor  was  not  an 
animal  which  breathed  water,  had  no  imperfect  skull,  and 
no  great  swimming  tail,  and  was  undoubtedly  not  a  herma- 
phrodite," I  question  whether  we  should  not  have  been 
equally  accipient,  and  quite  equally  impressed.  But  now 
that  Mr.  Darwin  has  come  after  all  to  have  as  much  con- 
fidence in  genealogy  as  the  author  of  the  Vestiges  himself, 
we  have  to  see  that  it  is  the  lepidosiren  or  mud-fish  that 
is  his  greatest  favourite  in  the  propagation  race.  When 
Sir  Charles  Lyell  ventures  to  say  a  word  about  "the 
necessity  of  the  continued  intervention  of  creative  power," 
Mr.  Darwin  is  immediately  reminded  of  the  mud-fish,  and 
of  the  ease  with  which  (to  use  his  own  expression)  it  will 
floor  Lyell.  "  I  cannot  see  this  necessity,"  he  says,  "  and 
its  admission,  I  think,  would  make  the  theory  of  natural 
selection  valueless.  Grant  a  simple  archetypal  creature 
like  the  mud-fish  or  lepidosiren  with  the  five  senses  and 
some  vestige  of  mind,  and  I  believe  natural  selection 
will    account    for    the    production    of    every   vertebrate 


356  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

animal ! "      Why  the  mud-fish  is  such  a  favourite   with 
Mr.   Darwin  probably  is  because,   as   he  tells  us,  it   is 
intermediate  "  between  reptiles  and  fish,  between  mam- 
mals and  birds  on  the  one  hand  and  reptiles  on  the  other 
hand."      The  mud-fish,  should  we  look  it  up,  as  we  easily 
may  in  any  zoological  primer,  will  be  found  a  creature 
something  like  an  eel,  and  of  no  great  size.     When  Mr. 
Darwin  asked  to  be  allowed  to  endow  it  with  "  the  five 
senses  and  some  vestige  of  mind,"  we  may  have  thought 
that  he  was  only  asking  to  be  granted  what  the  problem 
itself  amounted  to ;  but  should  we  look  at  the  fish  itself, 
and  consider  what  materials  Mr.  Darwin  only  asked  for 
in  order   to  make  it  a  man,  I  doubt  not  we  shall  admire 
his  modesty.     For  the  commencement  of  all  the  marvels 
of  animal  life,  Mr.  Darwin,  as  he  says,  would  seem  to 
require  only  "  a  proteine  compound  chemically  formed  in 
some  little  pond,  with  all  sorts  of  ammonia  and  phos- 
phoric salts,  light,  heat,  electricity,  etc.,  present ; "  but, 
alas  !  as  he  very  pointedly  laments,  "  at  the  present  day 
such  matter  would  be  instantly  devoured  and  absorbed," 
now  that  there  are  so  many  "  living  creatures  "  all  about 
(iii.  18).     The  want  of  this  primordial  life-matter,  which 
Mr.  Darwin  quite  cheerfully  opines  might  be  quite  easily 
"  chemically  formed,"  does  not  discourage  him  from  evolv- 
ing all  animals  whatever  from  a  single  specimen  of  them 
once  he  has  got  one — the  mud-fish  say,  which  for  him, 
too,  has  only  to  "  appear."     "  I  have  long  regretted,"  he 
says  (iii.  18),  "that   I   truckled  to  public   opinion,  and 
used  the  pentateuchal  term  of  creation,  by  which  I  really 
meant    '  appeared '  by   some  wholly    unknown   process." 
This  is  how  he  recants  the  wind-up  of  his  great  book, 
the  Origin,  "  into  that  grandeur  of  view  "  which  sees  "  the 
Creator  breathe  life  into  a  few  forms  or  into  one."     No, 
no  !  there  can  be  no  "  creation,"  but  only  "  modification  ;  " 
all  the  materials  of  which  are  imaginatively  prepared  for 


FANCIEBS  AND  BKBEDERS.  357 

it  in  the  first  imagined  "appearance"  out  of  the  first 
imagined  proteine.  Then  how  he  got  to  all  this!  II" 
tells   Dr.    Asa    Gray  (ii.   79),  once  already, 

■•  All   my  notions  about  how  species  ch  ••  derived 

from  long-continued  study  of  the  works  of  (and  converse 
with)  agriculturists  and  horticulturists;"  and  accordingly 
he  admits,  "  I  have  found  it  very  important  associating 
with  fanciers  and  breedei 

Nay,  he  even  confesses  that  he  did  not  disdain  to  find 
himself  seated  in  pursuit  of  knowledge  under  difficul- 
ties "amongst  a  set  of  pigeon  fanciers  in  a  gin  palace  in 
the  borough !"  (ii.  281).  It  is,  then,  in  consequence  of 
what  he  has  learned  in  this  way  about  pouters  and  fan- 
tails,  the  horns  of  cattle  and  the  wool  of  sheep,  together 
with  bands,  stripes,  or  liars  upon  the  backs  and  legs  of  horses 
and  donkeys  (ii.  Ill),  that  he  feels  himself  empov< 
at  last  to  declare  that  "  all  vertebrata  have  descended  from 
one  parent"  (ii.  211),  and  that  analogy  leads  him  to  the 
conclusion  of  the  descenl  also  "  from  one  parent  of  the 
great  kingdoms  (as  vertebrata,  articulata,  and  the  rest)" 
(ii.  212).  Nay,  so  high  did  he  mount  in  his  rapture  of 
discovery  (imagination),"that  he  applied  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion to  the  whole  organic  kingdom  from  plants  to  man  !" 
(ii.  6).  "What  a  wonderful  thing  that  first  only  chemically- 
formed  proteine  must  have  been,  which  already  contained 
in  its  invisible  "  seed-bags,"  as  Jean  Paul  Richter  might 
plants,  animals,  and  man,  Adam  and  Eve,  and  all!  Nay, 
what  a  much  more  wonderful  thing,  if  possible,  is  that 
spoon  of  mere  individual  difference  by  chance,  which 
alone  enables  Mr.  Darwin  to  dig  into  the  initial  material 
identity,  and  deal  it  out  into  the  infinity  of  the  infinitely 
I  plant  life  and  infinitely  varied  animal  life  which 
ie  around  us!  Once  Mr.  Darwin  has  finished  with 
the  vertebrata — only  the  vertebrata ! — what  a  wonderful 
leap  that  is,  a  salto  mortale,  a  flying  leap  on  the  single 


358  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

trapeze  of "  analogy,"  that  enables  him  without  more  ado  to 
find  the  articulata,  insecta,  mollusca,  molluscoida,  and  what 
not,  all  in  the  same  Noah's  ark  of  a  pedigree  with  man  ! 
It  is  not  an  expensive  matter  to  philosophize  in  that  way. 
The  grandfather,  Erasmus  the  first,  said  omnia  ex  conchis, 
or  ex  conchis  omnia,  "  all  from  oysters ; "  Mr.  Darwin 
surpasses  his  grandfather  and  cries  all,  oysters  too,  from 
proteine.  For  if  one  will  consider  of  it,  there  is,  at 
bottom  on  Mr.  Darwin's  part,  certainly  with  illustrations 
enow,  pictures  enow,  little  more  than  a  cry.  Let  us  look 
back  on  what  we  have  seen — let  us  turn  up  any  one  page 
as  alluded  to  in  Mr.  Darwin,  and  we  shall  find,  with  all 
his  illustrations,  that  the  method  of  Mr.  Darwin  is  one 
of  hypothesis,  supposition,  probable  conjecture  only.  It 
is  so  easy  to  prove  this  that,  without  troubling  to  look 
back  and  turn  up  pages  behind  us,  I  just  open  a  book  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  at  random — I  just  positively  take  it  up 
from  my  table,  open  it  at  random,  and  read  what  I  see. 
I  find  I  have  opened  at  page  594  of  the  second  edition 
of  the  Descent  of  Man,  "  At  a  very  early  period,  before 
man  attained  to  his  present  rank  in  the  scale,  many  of 
his  conditions  would  be  different  from  what  now  obtains 
amongst  savages.  Judging  from  the  analogy  of  the  lower 
animals  he  would  then  either  live  with  a  single  female 
or  be  a  polygamist."  (He  would  not  have  been  a 
bachelor,  it  seems  ?)  "  The  most  powerful  and  able  males 
would  succeed  best  in  obtaining  attractive  females." 
(We  know  that  the  weakest  succeed  now  in  that  respect 
quite  as  well  as  the  strongest !)  "  They  would  also 
succeed  best  in  the  general  struggle  for  life.  ...  At 
this  early  period  the  ancestors  of  man  would  not  be  suffi- 
ciently advanced  in  intellect  to  look  forward  to  distant 
contingencies ;  they  would  not  foresee  that  the  rearing  of 
all  their  children,  especially  their  female  children,  would 
make  the  struggle  of  life  severer  for  the  tribe.     They 


difference:  goes  ox — never  returns! 

would  be  governed  more  by  their  instincts.  They  would 
not  at  that  period,"  and  bo  on.  That  is  a  perfect  speci- 
men of  how  tin-  mind  of  Mr.  Darwin  works.  Difference 
would  be — difference  would  go  on  incalculably  into  new 
identities,  aot  possibly  turn  lurk,  as  all  facts  pa 
present  seem  od  the  whole  to  suggest,  into  the  old  ones 
again.  With  him  it  La  always  bo  and  bo  "  would  be." 
One  correspondent  seems  to  have  objected  t"  him  his 
constant  "  1  believe,  or  I  am  convinced,"  and  to  have 
advised  rather  what  he  mighl  depend  upon  as  "  I  prove" 
(ii.  L'-iO).  "  I  cannot  doubt  "  is  another  such  expression 
of  his.  "  I  cannot  doubt,"  he  says,  "  that  during  millions 
of  generations  individuals  of  a  species  will  be  born  with 
some  slight  variation  profitable  to  some  part  of  its 
economy."  That  is  his  whole  doctrine  in  its  one  creative 
bud:  individuals  vary  to  advantage;  and  it  rests  on  a 
mere  subjective  "  1  cannot  doubt,"  and  that,  too,  in 
regard  to  a  mere  mental  picture  of  millions ! — millions 
of  fenerations  ! — that  some  one  individual,  from  time  to 
time  among  them  all,  we  may  be  sate  to  assume,  will 
experience  "some  slight  variation  profitable  to  some  part 
of  its  economy."  The  whole  tendency  of  the  natural 
indefinite  picture,  which,  as  such,  we  cannot  well  gainsay, 
is  to  blind  us  to  the  pure  assumption  of  the  Bingle  pro- 
position—  individual  differences  will  so  accumulate  to 
advantage  in  millions  of  generations  as  to  constitute  a 
new  species.  Of  course  it  is  useless  t"  ask  for  the  proof 
which  the  correspondent  suggested;  proof  there  can  be 
none  given;  naturally,  that  record  of  millions  of  genera- 
tions can  have  a  place  only  in  the  imagination:  and  by 
wa}  of  proof  there  can  he  nothing  for  it  hut  illustratively 
to  allude  to  all  manner  of  conjectural  likelihoods  and 
specious  possibilities,  which  in  a  great   many  cases  will  be 

found  to  admit  of  a  no,  not  one  whit   less  satisfactorily 
than  of  a  yes.      To  read  what  Mr.  Ihirwin,  in  tic  A' 


360  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

look,  quotes  from  Mr.  Lewes  in  regard  to  Erasmus  Darwin, 
one  is  led  to  believe  that  Mr.  Lewes  had  a  very  high 
opinion  of  that  respected  grandsire.  That  is  certainly 
the  impression  Mr.  Darwin^desires'  to  convey.  "We  come 
to  the  very  opposite  conclusion,  however,  when  we  turn 
up  the  passage  and  read  in  Mr.  Lewes  himself,  who 
tells  us  how  Erasmus,  "  as  he  proceeds,  gets  more  and 
more  absurd ; "  how,  "  as  a  poet,  his  Botanic  Garden  by 
its  tawdry  splendour  gained  him  a  tawdry  reputation ; " 
and  how,  ':  as  a  philosopher,  his  Zoonomia  gained  him  a 
reputation  equally  noisy  and  fleeting."  The  grandson 
speaks  of  his  grandfather's  "  overpowering  tendency  to 
theorize  and  generalize."  And  certainly  no  one  will 
dispute  as  much  if  he  reads  the  Zoonomia.  All  life 
for  Erasmus  proceeds  from  an  organic  filament  ;  there  is 
a  different  one  for  the  different  kingdoms  ;  yet,  probably, 
he  says  at  last,  "  one  and  the  same  kind  of  living  filament 
is  and  has  been  the  cause  of  all  organic  life."  And  here 
I,  for  my  part,  prefer  the  grandfather's  filament  to  the 
grandson's  protcine.  Mr.  Darwin  conjectures  seals  to 
begin  to  feed  on  shore  (ii.  339),  and  so,  consequently,  to 
vary;  and  yet  he  admits  (ii.  336),  "I  know  of  no  fact 
showing  any  the  least  incipient  variation  of  seals  feeding 
on  the  shore."  The  grandfather  will  have  it,  again,  that 
all  animals  were  at  first  fish,  and  became  amphibious  by 
feeding  on  shore,  and  so  gradually  terrestrial.  This  is 
vastly  more  wholesale  than  what  the  grandson  says 
about  seals,  and  yet  I  know  not  that  the  grandfather's 
teeming  imagination  ever  gave  birth  to  a  more  Brob- 
dingnagian  monster  than  this  on  the  part  of  the  grand- 
son. At  page  141  of  the  latest  issue  of  the  Origin  of 
Species  we  read :  "  In  North  America  the  black  bear  was 
seen  by  Hearne  swimming  for  hours  with  widely  open 
mouth,  thus  catching  almost  like  a  whale  insects  in  the 
water."     A  bear  swimming  and  catching  insects,  even  as 


THE  BBAB  AND  THE  WHALE.  361 

a  whale  might — this  on   the  part  <>f  Mr.   Darwin  is  to 
make    easy   to  us    the   transition    of    one    animal    into 
another.     Truly,  as  I  said,  Mr.   Darwin  d< 
scout  genealogy  !     He  could  cot   stomach   it  in   the 
of  Dr.  Robert  Chambers  and  the  ]  a  fish  into  a 

reptile;  but  in  fifteen  years — the  interval  between  his 
reading  and  his  writing — he  has  learned  something — he 
has  acquired  himself  a  Bwallow  wide  enough  for  both  a 
whale  and  a  bear.     The  ;  -.  according  to 

a  note  in  the  Life  and  Letters  (ii  234),  was  omitted  in 
the  second  edition.  Nevertheless,  it  is  to  be  read  in  the 
last  issue  now.  Mr.  Darwin,  then,  must  have  deliberately 
restored  it.  I  say  deliberately,  for  we  rind  him,  November 
24,  1859,  consulting  Lyell  about  it.  "  Will  you  send 
me  one  line  to  say  whether  1  must  strike  out  about  the 
whale?  it  goes  to  my  heart!"  Next  day  also  we  find 
him  assuring  this  same  Lyell,  "I  will  certainly  leave 
out  the  whale  and  hear."  Nay.  in  September  of  the 
following  year  he  cannot  help  writing  once  more  on  the 
subject  to  Lyell,  but  this  time — so  much  has  it  gone  t«> 
his  heart — appealingly.  "  I  ►bserve,"  lie  cries, — "  observe 
that  in  my  wretched  polar  bear  ease  I  do  show  the  first 
step  by  which  conversion  into  a  whale  'would  be 
'would  offer  no  difficulty!'"  He  had  already  said  in 
the  first  of  these  three  letters,  "In  transitions  it  is  the 
premier  pas  qwi  coute"  and  we  are  to  understand,  there- 
fore, that  supplied  with  tl.  sp  of  the  transition  of 
a  bear  into  a  whale  we  could  be  at  no  loss  in  picturing 
to  ourselves  the  easy  remainder  of  the  entire  process. 
An  easy  remainder,  surely,  seeing  we  had  to  refer  I 
only  to  our  own  imaginations  !  It  is  to  the  imagination, 
at  all  events,  that  the  grandfather  testifies  great  grati- 
tude. He  cheerfully  allows  it  a  chief  place  in  "  meta- 
morphoses," ami  surely  with  reason!  It  shall  be  the 
imagination  of  the  mother  that  colours  tl.  I  her 


362  GIFFOKD  LECTURE  THE  EIGHTEENTH. 

progeny ;  he  even  brings  in  the  imagination  of  the 
father  in  a  wonderful  (Shandy -an)  manner  !  Then  it  is  by 
imagination  afterwards  of  the  original  irritation  of  the 
lachrymal  glands  at  birth  that  we  are  able  during  life  to 
weep  when  in  grief,  as  it  is  by  imagination  of  our  first  cold 
shivering,  also  at  birth,  that  when  in  fear  we  always 
tremble,  etc.  I  suppose  it  is  still  the  effects  of  imagina- 
tion he  alludes  to  when  he  says  :  "  The  tadpole  acquires 
less  and  lungs — when  he  wants  them !  and  loses  his  tail 
— when  it  is  no  longer  of  service  to  him  ! "  And  certainly 
it  is  only  by  a  signal  effort  of  the  imagination  that  he 
himself  has  been  enabled  to  discover  this  astonishing 
rationale  and  causality  of  squinting  (Zoonomia,  ii.  143). 
"  Squinting  is  generally  owing  to  one  eye  being  less 
perfect  than  the  other,  on  which  account  the  patient 
endeavours  to  hide  the  worst  eye  in  the  shadow  of 
the  nose !  "  We  may  break  off  here,  and  resume  next 
week. 


GIFFOItD  LECTUKE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin — Student  Bcribbles  on  Zoonomia — Family  dif- 
ferences, attraction  and  repulsion  —  Tin-  Darwins  In  this 
respect  —  Dr.  Erasmus  of  his  sons,  Mr.  Charles  and  Dr.  K.  W. 
—  Dr.  R.  W.  as  to  his  sons  —  Charles  on  his  grandfather, 
father,  brother — Mr.  Erasmus  on  his  brother's  book  —  <  >n  the 
a  priori — On  facts -Darwin's  one  method  Darwin  and 
Hooker  on  tacts  —  Family  politics  —  Family  religion  —  Family 
habits  —  Family  theories  —  Mr.  Darwin's  endowments  —  His 
Journal — The  Zoonomia — Theories  of  Dr.  Erasmus  Paley 
Instinct  —  An  iilm  to  Dr.  E. —  Dugald  Stewarl  —  Picture- 
thinking —  Dr.  E.'s  method — Darwin's  doubts — Bis  brave  spirit 
— The  theory  to  his  friends — Now— Almost  every  propos  of  tin- 
grandson  has  its  germ  in  the  grandfather  (Krause) — Vet  the 
position  of  the  latter — Byron  on — Mr.  Lewes  also — The  greater 
Newton,  original  Darwinism  now  to  be  revived  —  Dr.  E. 
admirable  on  design — Charles  on  cats  made  by  God  to  play 
with  mice  ! — Dr.  E.  on  atheism — The  apology— But  will  con- 
clude with  a  single  point  followed  thoroughly  out:  theQalap 
— Darwin  held  to  be  impregnably  fortified  there — The  Gala] 
thrown  up  to  opponents  at  every  turn— But  wean-  uol  natural- 
ists.!— Dr.  E.  rehabilitates  us — Description  of  the  Galap 
from  the  Journal — The  islands,  their  si/e,  uumber,  position, 
geographical  and  relative — depth  of  water  and  distance  between 
— Climate,  currents, wind — Geology,  botany,  zoology — Vol  . 
dull  sickly  vegetation,  hills,  craters,  lava,  pita,  heat,  salt- 
pools,  water  —  Tortoises,  lizards,  birds  —  Quite  a  region  to 
suggest  theory. 

When  we  left  off'  on  the  last  occasion  we  were  engaged 
in  drawing  illustrations  in  regard  to  the  source  and 
nature  of  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  from  the 
special  theories  and  peculiar  character  of  Erasmus 
Darwin,  the  elder.  We  saw  how  it  was  the  imagina- 
tion  that   predominated,  whether   in    the    theories    or    in 


364  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

the  man.  A  curious  testimony  to  this  on  the  part  of 
general  readers  may  be  found  in  the  scrawls  and  scribbles 
on  the  University  copy  of  the  Zoonomia.  Some  one  has 
been  wicked  enough  to  tear  out  a  good  number  of  pages 
from  one  of  the  volumes.  Of  scrawls,  there  occur : 
"  Imaginary — Darwin,  beware  !  That  is  the  rock  you 
have  split  upon,  Hypothesis,  where  other  barks  as  well  as 
yours  have  been  wrecked  ;"  and  again,  "Darwin's  dreams!" 
One  writer  laments  that  Erasmus  strayed  beyond  the 
Botanic  Garden  ;  had  he  not  done  so,"  the  writer  says, 

"  Then  disappointment  had  not  marked  thy  name  ; 
And  Darwin's  laurels  rivalled  Newton's  fame." 

There  may  have  been  remarked  a  peculiarity  in 
some  families  according  as  it  shall  be  the  principle  of 
attraction  or  the  principle  of  repulsion  that  rules  in 
them.  Of  some  the  members  are,  as  the  Germans  say, 
sprbde,  mutually  repellent ;  they  have  no  confidences  with 
each  other.  That  they  are  sons,  brothers,  sisters  is,  in 
respect  of  one  another,  a  reason  for  depreciation  and  dis- 
regard, almost  for  offensive  familiarity  and  contempt. 
They  never  think  of  the  opinion  of  one  of  themselves 
as  an  opinion  at  all ;  and  with  one  another  there  is  no 
end  to  the  liberties  they  take.  With  others,  all  that  is 
reversed.  Their  geese  are  all  swans.  They  support 
each  other.  In  season  and  out  of  season  they  cry  each 
other  up.  They  never  think  of  the  members  of  other 
families,  they  never  can  see  anything  in  them.  All  on 
the  outside  of  themselves  are  the  (3e{3r]\oi,  indifferent 
people,  people  of  no  account.  Charles  Darwin  was  a 
loyal,  modest  man,  who  was  quite  incapable  of  being 
unjust  to  others.  Such  a  trait,  too,  is  probably  to  be 
found,  more  or  less,  in  all  the  Darwins.  Still,  on  the  whole, 
perhaps,  the  Darwins,  at  least  of  three  generations,  may 
be   not   too   unrighteously   admitted   to    have    exhibited 


THE  DABWIN   FAMILY.  3G5 

something  of  the  mutual  -  admiration  principla  The 
grandfather  prints  with  pride  the  Literary  productions 
of  his  sons,  "Mr."  Charles  and  "Br.  /•'.  W."  Darwin.  "What 
a  father  Dr.  R,  W.  again  was  to  his  two  sons,  Erasmus 

and  Charles,  the  latter  of  them  has  expresslj  chronicled 
in  the  warmesl  terms.  Of  his  grandfather  he  is  cor- 
respondently  eulogistic:  "He  (the  grandfather)  had 
uncommon  powers  of  ohservation,"  he  says.  Bui  i 
his  father,  Dr.  R.  W.,  Dr.  R.  W.  was  to  Charles  "  Lncom- 
parahly  the  acutest  observer  lie  ever  knew"  "  the  best 
judge  of  character  he  ever  knew,"  "  the  wisest  man  he 
ever  knew;"  and  he  was  also,  as  we  have  Been,  "  the 
largest  man  he  ever  knew!"  Of  his  brother  Erasmus, 
the  opinion  of  Charles  is  that  he  was  the  "  clearest- 
headed  man  whom  he  had  ever  known."  Then  this 
Erasmus,  for  his  part,  must  be  granted  to  have  been 
equally  true  to  the  family  principla  When  hi-  brother's 
book,  the  Origin,  reaches  him,  and  he  reads  it,  he  cannot 
help  exclaiming  to  the  author  of  it  (ii  233),"  1  really 
think  it  is  the  most  interesting  hook  I  ever  read.  .  .  . 
In  fact,  the  a  priori  reasoning  is  so  entirely  satisfactory 
to  me  that  if  the  facts  won't  lit  in,  why,  so  much  the 
worse  for  the  facts,  is  my  feeling."  And  here  Erasmus, 
as  I  may  observe,  only  expresses  the  same  opinion  as  I 
have  expressed  in  regard  to  his  brother's  method.  There 
is  an  a  priori  theory,  and  then  there  La  a  miscellany  of 
remark  in  regard  to  facts  to  support  it.  Erasmus  i-  very 
honest  in  Ms  avowals.  The  theory  is  the  all  ami  all  to 
him,  the  facts  hut  poor  wretches  that  have  only  to  knock 
under  and  adapt  themselves,  [ndeed,  this  opinion  about 
facts  does  not  seem  confined  to  Erasmus  the  younger; 
there  would  appear  even  some  fatality  incident  t<>  facts  so 

far  as  they  occur  in  natural  history  at  all.     Charles  himself 

avows  to  his  friend  Hooker  (ii.  45),  "  It   is  really  dis- 
gusting   and    humiliating    to    see   directly    opposite    con- 


3G6  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

elusions  drawn  from  the  same  facts ; "  to  which  remark 
Sir  Joseph  Hooker's  reply  must  have   been  peculiar,  for 
Charles  (ii.  70)  rejoins  to  it,  "It  is  a  melancholy,  and  I 
hope  not  quite  true  view  of  yours,  that  facts  will  prove 
anything,    and    are    therefore    superfluous ! "       But    as 
regards  the  family,  there  is  more  than  mutual  love  in  it : 
there  are  family  politics — they  are  all  Whigs ;  and  there 
is  a  family  religion — they  are  all,  we  may  say,  in  regard 
to  the  Creed,  heterodox.     Other  things,  too,  run  in  it  as 
a  family,  such  as  early  rising,  hatred  of  alcoholic  beverages, 
and  a  practical  love  of  natural  history.      In  fact,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  we  are  right  in  this,  that  a  family 
agreement,  down  to  the  most  individual  particulars,  was  the 
very  hinge,  as  it  were,  on  which  the  whole  three  of  them, 
grandfather,  father,  and  son,  turned.      The  constitution 
even  of  their  very  minds  seems  to  have  been  pretty  well 
identical.       As    we   have   seen,  the   grandfather  had  an 
"  overpowering  tendency  to  theorize  "  (i.  6) ;   the  father 
"  formed  a  theory/'  the  son  says,  "  for  almost  everything 
that  occurred"  (i.  20);  and  the  son  himself,  as  regards 
hypotheses,  confesses  (i.   103),  "  I  cannot  resist  forming 
one  on  every  subject."     Mr.  Darwin  also  admits  that  the 
"  passion  for  collecting  "  was  in  him  "  clearly  innate  ;  " 
and   again,   that   his   "  scientific   tastes "   were    certainly 
innate.       In  fact,  there  cannot   be   a   doubt   that,  than 
Charles   Darwin,  there   never  was   a   man  born  with  a 
purer  and  stronger  innate  or  inherited  faculty  to  observe. 
Why,  the  love  for  everything  that  crawls  was  so  absorbing 
in  him  that  he   put  a  black  beetle  into  his  mouth  as 
another  man  might  put  a  bon-bon  !     At  Down  there  was 
not  a  bird's  nest  in  his  garden,  or  all  about,  that  he  did 
not  know.     Almost,  it  might  be  said,  that  there  was  not 
to  be  found  on  his  grounds  even  a  single  worm  that  was 
not  his  familiar  acquaintance.     We  have  many  journals 
of   naturalists   on   scientific   voyages,  but   never  such   a 


THE  ZOOXOMIA.  367 

journal  as  that  of  Mr.  Darwin  in  the  Beagle.  It  is  a 
practical  lesson  in  geology,  such  as  can  be  got  nowhere 
else,  even  to  read  it.  Then  as  regards  animals  and 
plants,  during  the  whole  expedition,  not  one  sample  of 

the  one  kind  or  the  other  seems  to  have  escaped  his 
recognition.  There  never  was  such  a  brain  as  that  of 
Charles  Darwin,  stuffed  full,  teeming,  and  running  over 
with  a  thousand  facts  that  no  one  before  aim  ever  had 
a  mind  to  think  of,  to  notice,  or  to  record.  Then  his 
ingenuity  in  adjusting  fact  to  fact  or  in  eliminating  con- 
trarieties and  contradictions  was  marvellous  —  utterly 
unexampled  —  such  success  in  these  ways  was  never 
exhibited  in  a  book  before.  Fancy  the  grandfather  with 
similar  powers,  but  free  from  the  practice  of  medicine 
and  the  production  of  poetry,  what  a  book  the  Zoonomia 
might  have  been  !  And  see  what  it  is  instead  !  A  crude 
melange  of  crass  theories,  and  undigested,  inconsistent, 
miscellaneous  particulars!  The  author  of  it  starts  with 
his  d  priori  theory  of  "all  from  oysters;"  he  submits  it 
to  the  test  of  his  miscellany,  and  that  is  the  result  !  Fish 
which  are  generally  suspended  in  water,  and  swallows 
which  are  generally  suspended  in  air,  have  their  backs, 
we  are  told,  the  colour  of  the  distant  ground  and  their 
bellies  that  of  the  sky.  Why  this  ?  That  the  swallows 
may  escape  hawks  which,  being  above  them,  will  mistake 
their  backs  for  the  ground,  while  below  them  they  will 
mistake  their  bellies  for  the  sky!  I  suppose  it  is  the 
pike  that,  as  above  or  below,  is  similarly  to  be  duped  "t 
his  fish!  Dr.  Erasmus  actually  fancies  insects  to  be 
undoubtedly  formed  from  the  sexual  appendages  "t 
plants,  the  honey-loving  stamens  and  pistils  of  the 
tlowers,  as  he  calls  them,  some  acquiring  wings,  others 
lius,  and  others  claws  from  their  ceaseless  efforts  to  pro- 
cure their  food,  or  to  secure  themselves  from  injury  : 
"changes,"  he  avers,  "nut   more  incomprehensible  than 


368  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

the  transformation  of  tadpoles. into  frogs  and  caterpillars 
into  butterflies  !  "  On  another  physico-metaphysical  con- 
ceit of  Erasmus  Darwin's  we  have  a  commentary  Dy 
Paley.  "  I  am  not  ignorant,"  he  says  {Natural  Theology, 
cap.  18),  "  of  the  theory  which  resolves  instinct  into  sensa- 
tion. Thus  the  incubation  of  eggs  is  accounted  fo#  by  the 
pleasure  which  the  bird  is  supposed  to  receive  from  the 
pressure  of  the  smooth  convex  surfaces.  .  .  .  The  affec- 
tion of  viviparous  animals  for  their  young  is,  in  like 
manner,  solved  by  the  relief  which  they  receive  in 
suckling.  .  .  .  The  salmon's  urging  her  way  up  the 
stream  of  fresh-water  rivers  is  attributed  to  some  grati- 
fication or  refreshment  which,  in  this  particular  state  of 
the  fish's  body,  she  receives  from  the  change  of  element." 
It  is  not  worth  while  quoting  what  Paley  says  in  answer 
to  all  this.  The  groundless  arbitrariness,  perhaps  even 
the  semi-seriousness  of  such  propos  cannot  escape  us. 
As  regards  incubation,  we  know  it  to  be  a  fact  that  such 
noxious  and  poisonous  animals  as  snakes,  serpents,  boa- 
constrictors,  and  cobras  will,  as  with  a  mother's  solicitude, 
so  obstinately  sit  on  their  eggs  that  they  will  rather  die 
than  leave  them.  Is  such  devoted  affection  in  appear- 
ance only  relief  of  a  colic  in  fact  ?  If  you  rescue  a 
young  sparrow  fallen  from  the  nest  and  expose  it  in  a 
cage  at  your  window,  I  wonder  if  it  is  only  for  relief  to  a 
pain  in  the  stomach  that  the  she-sparrow  and  the  he- 
sparrow  will,  for  many  days,  cling  incessantly  to  the  cage 
with  food  in  their  bills  for  their  little  one  within  it!  Dr. 
Erasmus  Darwin  ventures,  even  in  respect  of  what  is 
purely  metaphysical,  to  tell  us  what  an  idea  is.  To  him 
it  is,  as  it  were,  only  the  stamp  on  the  body  of  the  things 
without.  He  defines  it  "  a  contraction,  or  motion,  or 
configuration  of  the  fibres  which  constitute  the  imme- 
diate organ  of  sense."  Of  this  definition  Dugald  Stewart 
remarks  that  it  is  "  calculated  to  impose  on  a  very  wide 


PICTUBE-THINKING.  3  G  9 

circle  of  readers  by  the  mixture  it  exhibits  of  crude  and 
vjpionary  metaphysics,"  and  I  think  we  may,  without 
intolerable  injustice,  extend  the  criticism  to  all  those 
semi-physical  and  semi-metaphysical  reels  in  bottles, 
which  men  like  the  author  of  Zoonomia  are  so  innocently 
biisy,  roe-like,  to  construct.  Most  unformed  men  do  not 
reason,  to  call  it  reason.  Proof  with  them  is  the 
instinctive  recourse  to  a  picture.  They  are,  as  Cant 
has  it,  only  on  such  stage  as  the  Egyptians  or  the  Chi 
whose  miods  as  yet  are  not  fine  enough  for  pure  notions, 
and  can  only  understand  by  the  help  of  physical  repre- 
sentations—  not  possibly  by  the  mere  letters  of  an 
alphabet.  They  think  in  tropes,  they  see  in  metaphors. 
The  circulation  of  their  brains  is  a  circulation  in  im 
Their  metaphysics  in  general  are  bo  thickened  with 
physics  that  they  can  only  settle  into  what  is  bizarre 
and  biassed,  counterfeit  and  mock.  For  gold  th< 
only  offer  us  pinckbeck.  I  >r.  Erasmus  was  a  medical 
man,  and  medical  men,  at  least,  had  not  always  then  the 
advantage  of  courses  in  logic,  metaphysics,  and  morals, 
they  had  not  always  then  transformed  their  hieroglyphics 
into  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  It  is  just  possible  that 
there  is  a  little  of  that  physical  thinking  even  now-a- 
days,  and  not  on  the  part  of  the  Bob  Sawyers  alone. 

The  procedure  of  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin,  then,  is  alto- 
gether the  method  ami  manner  of  a  man  who  starts  with 
an  it  priori  theory,  and  looks  miscellaneously  to  heaven, 

and  earth,  and  the  -a,  and  all  that  in  them  is,  for 
illustrations,  mere  pietures  in  proof.  As  Dr.  Asa  Gray 
objects  to  the  natural  selection  of  his  grandson,  in  all 
that  quasi-ratiocination,  there  is  no  point  of  departure 
undeniably  and  manifestly  made  good  as  a  vera  i 
<  >r  as  Professor  Sedgwick  similarly  objected,  there  is  no 
movement  on  the  Baconian  principle,  no  regular  induc- 
tion, from  point   to  point,  and  step  bo  step,  accurately, 

2  A 


370  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

precisely,  and  convincingly  carried  out.  "  Many  of  his 
wide  conclusions  are  built  upon  assumptions  which  can 
neither  be  proved  nor  disproved."  There  are  times  when, 
in  respect  of  his  own  work,  such  objections  start  up  in 
all  their  force  even  to  Mr.  Charles  Darwin  himself, 
almost  as  definite  barriers  to  his  own  advance.  To  Asa 
Gray  he  fully  admits  (ii.  217)  "that  there  are  very 
many  difficulties  not  satisfactorily  explained  by  my 
theory."  These  difficulties,  he  confesses  to  Jenyns  (ii. 
219),  "stagger  him  to  this  very  day."  Even  to  Mr. 
Huxley,  as  we  saw,  he  writes,  "  1  entirely  agree  with  you 
that  the  difficulties  on  my  notions  are  terrific"  (ii.  354). 
In  regard  to  these  same  difficulties,  we  have  this  further 
admission  to  Dr.  Asa  Gray  (ii.  315),  "  I  could  myself," 
says  Charles,  "  write  a  more  damning  review  " — of  his 
own  book,  that  is — "  than  has  as  yet  appeared."  Who- 
ever can  read  between  the  lines,  however,  in  these 
writings  of  Mr.  Charles  Darwin's,  will  have  no  difficulty 
in  discovering  that  he  (Darwin)  was.  despite  his  doubts, 
as  brave  a  man  as  ever  lived.  He  cowers  beneath  his 
checks  at  times ;  but  ever  he  whispers  to  himself,  like 
a  true  Englishman  as  he  is,  "  It's  dogged  as  does  it  !  " 
It  is  in  few  things  more  interesting  than  to  watch  hiin, 
during  the  incubation  of  his  theory,  in  his  various  letters 
to  his  chosen  friends.  His  despondent  moods  are  in- 
teresting, and  ever  again  his  renewed  courage.  But 
what,  perhaps,  is  still  more  interesting,  is  the  persistent 
resolution  he  manifests  to  win  these  friends  over,  together 
with  the  shrewd,  almost  insidious,  but  never  ignoble, 
adaptations  and  accommodations  he  sets  into  operation 
according  to  the  peculiar  character  of  each.  Lyell, 
Hooker,  Huxley,  Carpenter,  Gray  are  all  most  delicately 
handled.  He  says  once  to  one  of  these,  "  Often  and 
often  a  cold  shudder  has  run  through  me,  and  I  have 
asked  myself  whether  I  may  not  have  devoted  my  life 


THE  THEOBY.  TO  HIS  FRIENDS.  371 

to  a  phantasy  .  .  .  but  investigators  of  truth,  like 
Lyell  and  Hooker,  cannol  be  wholly  wrong,  and  there- 
fore I  rest  in  peace."  Still  1  know  nol  that  thai  peace 
was  a  well-assured  one.  There  is  ample  evidence  in 
these  letters  thai  Lyell,  Carpenter,  Gray,  and,  we  may 
say,  all  his  less-noted  friends,  were  never  believers  in  his 
theory,  pure  and  simple.  We  haw  seen  difficulties 
called  ominous  even  with  Mr.  Huxley;  and  as  regards 
Sir  Joseph  Hooker,  it  may  be  that  he  will  march  with 
his  friend  to  the  very  end  still — not  thai  these  letters 
show  him  to  have  been  ever  much  more  assured  than 
Lyell,  or  Gray,  or  the  resl  were.  And  how  is  it,  now. 
that  the  Origin  of  Species  has  been  thirty  years  before 
the  public  ?  As  regards  the  great  outside  world,  while 
still  caviare  to  the  orthodox,  it  is  understood  anion" 
those  who  are  above  the  Bible  that  natural  selection  is 
a  demonstrated  and  established  doctrine.  It  is  not  so 
certain,  however,  that  as  much  is  understood  anion"- 
experts.  I  don't  know  but  what  we  begin  to  hear 
murmurs  in  camp.  I  cannot  follow  this  farther  now. 
however.  I  will  only  call  to  mind  the  last  Presidential 
Address  of  the  British  Association,  and  its  warnings 
against  incautious  assertions  as  to  organic  life. 

And  not  quite  to  be  misunderstood,  1  will  add  this, 
wdiatever  I  have  said,  I  have  no  intention  to  deny  that 
there  may  be  at  this  moment  man}'  and  good  and 
worthy  men,  believers  both  in  Mr.  Darwin  and  their 
Bible.  To  me,  however,  the  consideration  of  his  grand- 
lather's  theories, as  well  in  themselves  as  in  their  fortune 
and  fate,  give,  if  not  warrant  and  assurance,  at  Least 
suspicion,  of  a  foundation  of  sand.  With  the  single  ex- 
ception of  whal  is  meant  bythe  one  word  "modification," 
I  know  of  no  genetic  doctrine  in  the  works  of  the  grand- 
son that  will  not  be  found,  at  greater  or  less  length, 
suggested,   mooted,   propounded,   discussed   in    the   work-. 


372  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

of  the  grandfather.  Dr.  Ernst  Krause  wrote  in  the 
specially  Darwinian  number  of  the  evolutionary  journal, 
Kosmos,  an  essay,  "  The  Scientific  Works  of  Erasmus 
Darwin,"  which  Mr.  Charles  Darwin  so  much  relished 
that  he  wrote  Dr.  Krause  "  thanking  him  cordially  .  .  . 
and  asking  his  permission  to  publish  an  English  transla- 
tion of  the  essay."  In  this  he  was  joined  by  his  brother 
Erasmus  the  younger.  Dr.  Krause  is  a  foremost  evolu- 
tionist, and,  with  much  else,  writes  a  special  work, 
Charles  Darwin  and  his  Relation  to  Germany.  The 
translation  in  question  was  entrusted  to  Mr.  W.  S. 
Dallas,  also  a  distinguished  Darwinian,  who  executes 
the  admirable  index  to  the  Variation  of  Animals  and 
Plants,  the  translation  of  Fritz  Muller's  Fur  Darwin, 
and  the  glossary  to  the  sixth  edition  of  the  Origin. 
To  the  resultant  book  by  Mr.  Dallas,  Mr.  Darwin  con- 
tributes, in  the  shape  of  a  "  preliminary  notice,"  more 
than  one  half  of  the  whole.  "  Many  persons,"  says  Mr. 
Darwin  in  his  autobiography,  "  have  been  much  interested 
by  this  little  life,  and  I  am  surprised  that  only  800  or 
900  copies  were  sold."  Other  book-makers  may  be  sur- 
prised, but  hardly  for  Mr.  Darwin's  reason !  From  all 
this,  I  think  we  may  conclude  that  Dr.  Krause  can  claim 
an  absolute  Darwinian  approbation  and  endorsement, 
when,  in  said  little  book,  he  writes  of  Mr.  Charles  Dar- 
win, that  he  "  has  succeeded  to  an  intellectual  inheritance, 
and  carried  out  a  programme  sketched  forth,  and  left 
behind  by  his  grandfather.  Almost  every  single  work 
of  the  younger  Darwin  may  be  paralleled  by  at  least  a 
chapter  in  the  works  of  his  ancestor,  .  .  .  heredity, 
adaptation,  the  protective  arrangements  of  animals  and 
plants,  sexual  selection,  insectivorous  plants,  and  the 
analysis  of  the  emotions  and  sociological  impulses ;  nay, 
even  the  studies  on  infants  are  to  be  found  already  dis- 
cussed in  the  writings  of  the  elder  Darwin,  .   .   .   who,  a 


POSITION  OF  DR.  ERASMUS.  373 

LamarckiaD  before  Lamarck  first  established  a  complete 
system  of  the  theory  of  evolution."  Of  the  parallel 
between  the  younger  and  the  elder  Darwin,  that  is  to 
say  more  than  even  I  mooted,  and  in  such  circumstam 
to  give  an  authority  to  the  general  position  utterly  beyond 
dispute.  Are  we  to  suppose,  then,  that  the  course  of 
literary  and  philosophical  history  in  Great  Britain  has 
gone  all  wrong  ?  Before  the  culmination  and  success  of 
Mr.  Charles  Darwin,  whether  in  literature  or  philosophy 
the  name  of  Erasmus  Darwin  had  pretty  well  ceased  to 
be  heard  of.  As  we  knew  that  there  had  been  a  John 
Philips  and  a  Splendid  Shilling,  or  a  Scotchman  Wilkie 
and  a  thing  called  Epigoniad,  or  a  Bishop  Wilkins  and 
his  Discovery  of  a  New  World,  so  we  knew  of  a  Botanic 
Garden  and  a  Zoonomia;  but  as  we  only  knew  of  the 
former,  so  we  only  knew  of  the  latter:  we  had  never 
read  either.  As  regards  Zoonomia,  we  had  taken  Dugald 
Stewart  and  Dr.  Thomas  Brown's  word  for  it  :  it  was 
something  merely  crude  and  visionary,  the  mushroom 
product  of  uninitiated  crassitude;  and  as  for  the  Botanic 
Garden,  we  had,  perhaps,  heard  the  recitation  from  it  of 
'  Eliza  on  the  wood-crowned  height,"  or  of  the  grand 
passage,  "  lioll  on,  ye  stars!  exult  in  youthful  prime,"  oi 
of  the  melancholy  passage,  "  So  the  sad  mother  at  the 
noon  of  night;"  and  had  thought  to  ourselves  always 
how  happy  was  that  line  of  Byron's  that  dubbed  Erasmus 
but  "  a  mighty  master  of  unmeaning  rhyme  I"1      In  fact 

1  In  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  Byron  exclaims  in  prose, 
"  The  neglect  of  the  Botanic  Garden  is  Borne  proof  of  returning  taste," 
while  in  verse  he  has  these  pretty  plain  lines  : — 

"  Let  these,  or  such  as  these,  with  just  appla 
Restore  the  M  use's  violated  laws ; 
But  not  in  flimsy  Darwin's  pompous  chime, 
Thai  mighty  master  of  unmeaning  rhyme  ; 
Whose  gilded  cymbals,  more  adorned  than  char. 
The  eye  delighted,  but  fatigued  the  eai  ; 


374  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

on  the  whole  matter  we  just  took  it  for  granted  that 
when  Mr.  Lewes  said,  "  tawdry  splendour  gained  him  a 
tawdry  reputation,"  which,  in  another  respect,  proved 
"  equally  noisy  and  fleeting," — we  just  took  it  for  granted 
that  when  this  was  said  all  was  said,  and  that,  as  regards 
Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin,  we  might,  with  perfect  tranquillity, 
leave  him  henceforth  quite  undisturbed  in  the  limbo  of 
other  poetasters  and  philosophasters.  If,  however,  we 
are  to  believe  the  Herr  Dr.  Krause,  all  this  is  wrong, — 
all  this  is  a  sin,  and  a  shame,  and  a  disgrace, — all  this 
is  a  flagrant  injustice  to  one  of  the  greatest  scientific 
discoverers  that  ever  lived — a  discoverer  that  antici- 
pated the  discoveries  of  even  the  illustrious  Charles 
Darwin,  whom  it  has  not  been  esteemed  excessive  praise 
of  late  to  style  "  The  Greater  Newton."  Nay,  there  are 
others,  it  seems,  who  surpass  even  the  Herr  Dr.  Krause 
in  his  admiration  of  Dr.  Erasmus.  Dr.  Krause  tells  us 
himself  of  a  wish  seriously  expressed  on  the  part  of  some 
to  revive  original  Darwinism  now.  It  is  not  so  with 
him,  however,  let  him  admire  the  elder  Darwin  and 
Darwinism  as  he  may.  On  the  contrary,  any  such  wish 
to  him  "  shows  a  weakness  of  thought  and  a  mental 
anachronism  which  no  one  can  envy."  And  yet,  I,  for 
my  part,  after  all  that  even  Krause  himself  has  told  me, 
know  not  that,  in  reference  to  the  origin  and  transforma- 
tions of  plants  and  animals,  the  thought  and  thoughts  of 
the  grandson  differ  from  those  of  the  grandfather,  unless 
in  so  far  as  the  former  (Charles),  unlike  the  latter,  rejects 
the  interposition  of  a  designing  cause :   Charles  Darwin 

In  shore,  the  simple  lyre  could  once  surpass, 
But  now  worn  down,  appear  in  native  brass  ; 
While  all  his  train  of  hovering  sylphs  around 
Evaporate  in  similes  and  sound  : 
Him  let  them  shun,  with  him  let  tinsel  die  : 
False  glare  attracts,  but  more  offends,  the  eye." 


DR.  ERASMUS  ON  ATHEISM.  375 

has  only  one  device  for  the  creation  of  that  whole  mar- 
vellous panorama  of  life  on  earth;  and,  in  two  words,  it 
is,  individual  difference!  I.  for  my  part, then,  who  stand 
up  here  for  the  certainty  of  Natural  Theology  and  the 
cogency  of  all  its  arguments,  ontological,  cosmological, 
teleological,  must  believe  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  grand- 
father, tu  have  been,  in  his  reverence  for  design,  much 
nearer  the  truth  than  Charles  Darwin  the  grandsons  I 
cannot  forget  the  many  passages  1  have  Been  in  the 
former  expressive  of  his  deep  sense  of  the  reality  in  this 
world  of  an  organization  on  ideas.  All  that  contrasts  to 
me  wonderfully  with  the  strangely  young,  the  innocently 
simple  admissions,  which,  as  fruit  of  adequate  reflection, 
the  grandson  so  unmisgivingly  imparts  to  the  inexperi- 
enced youths  who  write  to  him  Eor  guidance.  !!<■  seems 
to  have  been  greatly  exercised  in  mind  that,  given  a 
beneficent  and  omnipotent  Deity,flies  should  feed  within 
the  living  bodies  of  caterpillars,  or  that  a  rut  Bhould  play 
with  mice  (ii.  312).  The  grandfather,  Eor  Ids  part, 
though,  like  the  grandson,  he  "  disbelieved  in  any  revela- 
tion," could  never  see  his  way  tu  give  up  Ids  faith  in  the 
existence  of  God.  He  even  published  an  ode  on  the 
folly  of  Atheism,  of  which  this  is  the  first  verse: — 

••  Dull  Atheist,  could  a  dizzy  <lance 
( >F  atoms  lawless  hurled 
Construcl  so  wonderful,  bo  wise, 
So  harmonized  a  world  I ': 

And  now  I  have  to  say  a  word  of  apology.  1  cannot 
do  that  justice  in  these  lectures  t<>  the  whole  theme  of 
Darwinism  for  which  I  had  prepared  myself.      I  have  by 

me,  one  way  and  another,  nut   much  Less  than    a  hundred 

and  a  half  of  closely-written  quarto  pages  of  extracts  and 
memoranda,  which  were  to  serve  me  as  mere  car  and 
nucleus  to  a  complete  statement   on  the  whole  subject. 


376  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

The  attempt  to  carry  out  this  programme  gave  me  great 
pain,  and  cost  me  much  anxiety  for  long,  inasmuch  as, 
with  the  space  at  my  command,  I  was  simply  endeavour- 
ing to  reconcile  impossibilities.  I  do  not  believe  that 
even  the  whole  course  of  lectures  would  have  enabled  me 
to  exhaust  the  materials  I  had  gathered.  What  I  had  to 
content  myself  with  in  the  end  was  simply  to  sit  down 
and  write  according  as  the  information  in  my  head 
prompted  me.  Even  to  turn  up  my  authorities  proved 
for  the  most  part  as  distressing  and  as  futile  as  to 
operate  on  a  needle  in  a  bundle  of  hay.  It  is  for  that, 
then,  I  apologise — that  I  have  been  able  to  present  to 
you  the  subject  only  in  a  certain  miscellaneousness. 

In  conclusion,  however,  I  will  now  take  up  one  point 
and  follow  it  out.  Every  one  who  has  at  all  approached 
this  subject  has  heard  of  the  Galapagos,  the  Galapagos 
Islands,  or  the  Galapagos  Archipelago.  In  the  index  to 
the  Life  and  Letters,  the  fauna  of  them  are  named  "  the 
starting-point  of  investigations  into  the  origin  of  species  ;  " 
and  Mr.  Darwin  himself  more  than  once  avows  that  it 
was  what  he  had  observed  there  led  him  to  study  the 
origin  of  species  (i.  82,  ii.  23,  iii.  159);  while  it  is  well 
known  that  the  adherents  of  Mr.  Darwin  generally  throw 
up  the  bastion  of  the  Galapagos  as  a  barrier  so  strong 
that  no  enemy  can  carry  it.  But  that  being  so,  it  is 
evident  that  there  may  be  that  there  which,  if  seen  and 
understood,  would  convince  us  too.  We,  too,  have  no 
interest  but  the  truth.  I,  for  my  part,  am  quite  willing 
to  be  convinced,  if  there  be  any  evidence  to  convince, 
whether  in  the  Galapagos  or  anywhere  else. 

For  the  information  which  is  necessary  to  us  here,  we 
have  to  turn  to  that  admirable  volume  which  Mr.  Darwin 
names  his  Journal  of  Researches.  I  have  already  men- 
tioned how  it  is  a  work  singular  and  single  in  its  ex- 
cellence.    Mr.  Darwin  devotes  one  whole  chapter  in  it, 


1)1!.  EBASMUS  REHABILITATES  US.  377 

the  seventeenth,  to  the  Galapagos  Archipelago;  and  it  is 
to  that  chapter  I  have  to  direct  your  special  attention. 
We  have  not  the  advantage  of  either  the  knowledge  or 
ability  of  Mr.  Darwin;  bul  if  these  islands  were  of  Buch 
a  nature  as  to  impress  Mr.  Darwin  only  in  one  direction, 
surely  we  musl  expect  them,  in  the  same  direction,  more 
or  less  to  impress  as  too.  No  doubt  there  is  an  objection 
not  unfrequently  taken  which  would  summarily  sist  the 
appeal  to  tin'  possibility  of  any  such  influence  for  us: 
we  are  nol  naturalists,  and  only  naturalists  can  jud 
what  is  concerned  in  the  Galapagos!  Mr.  Darwin 
himself,  however,  writes  to  Asa  Gray:  "I  think  it  of 
importance  thai  my  notions  should  be  read  by  intelligent 
men,  accustomed  to  scientific  argument,  though 
naturalists."  There  is,  to  be  sure,  a  certain  presumption, 
after  all,  in  the  assumption,  and  in  the  proceeding  to 
judgment  on  the  assumption  of  just  as  much  as  that — but 
perhaps  a  reference  to  the  grandfather  will  pul  us  right 
again,  and  pretty  well  confirm  to  us  sonic  locus  standi  in 
as  great  a  matter  as  the  present.  We  have  Been  that, 
in  view  of  its  excellence  even  in  the  direction  of  the 
grandson,  whose  peculiar  lines  it  precisely  anticipated,  it 
has  heen  seriously  proposed  to  restore  the  elder  Dar- 
winism, Now,  of  the  Bible  of  that  Darwinism,  the 
Zoonomia,  this  is  the  Dedication:  "To  all  those  who 
study  the  operations  of  the  mind  as  a  science,  or  who 
practise  medicine  as  a  profession."  If  only  the  word 
"practise"  had  been  in  the  past  tense,  one  might  have 
heen  excused  for  the  thought  that,  in  no  very  distant 
regard,  Dr.  Darwin  had  l>ccn.  to  Bay  so,  almost  pro- 
phetically personal!  Ni  sutor  supra  crepidam  i 
course,  the  rule ;  bul  it  need  nut  prove  exceptionless.  I 
have  the  idea  that  ^Ir.  Huxley  would  look  a  little 
torvovs,  did  any  man  dispute  his  right  to  a  judgment  on 
Descartes ! 


378  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

The  Galapagos  are  a  group  of  small  islands,  of  various 
sizes,  and  some  thirteen  in  number,  of  which  only  two 
seem   unnamed.      Six  of  them  may  be  regarded   as   out- 
lying, and  seven  central.      Of  the  former  on  the  north, 
three,  as  scarcely  referred  to  by  Mr.  Darwin,  may  be  left 
out  of  count.      On  the  east,  Chatham  Island  is  distant 
(say)  22  miles,  and  on  the  south,  Charles  Island  32  from 
the  nearest  central  island.      Twelve   miles  may  be   the 
greatest,  and  two  or  three  the  least,  distance  from  one  to 
the  other  among  the  central  islands  themselves.     These 
measures,  however,  are  dependent  on  Mr.  Darwin's  own 
map  and  scale  in  his  Journal,  and  cannot  be  considered 
rigorously  exact.      The  situations,  and  especially  the  dis- 
tances, in  each  other's  regard,  are  the  important  points 
in  the  consideration  so  far.     We  advance  to  a  second 
important  point  when  we  recognise  the  position  of  these 
islands  to  be  right  under  the  equator  in  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
and  (the  third  important  point)  at  a  distance  of  between 
five  or  six  hundred  miles  west  of   South  America.     The 
climate  of    these  islands,  despite    their  position  on  the 
equator,  is  represented  as  far  from  being  excessively  hot, 
the  great  Polar  current  from  the  south,  namely,  surround- 
ing them  with  a  sea  of  a  singularly  low  temperature. 
For  winds  these  islands  are  exposed,  of  course,  to  the 
southern  Trades,  which  blow  over  them  as  far  as  four 
degrees  farther  north ;  but  above  a  certain  height  they 
are  apt  to  be  overhung  wTith  vapours.      It  is  only  under 
these  vapours,  and  especially  to  windward,  that  vegetation 
can  be  said  to  thrive,  for  everywhere  else  these  islands 
are  of  a  monotonously  repulsive  sterile  aspect.     They  are 
all    volcanic,  and    supposed    to    be    geologically   recent. 
Some  of  the  craters  surmounting  the  larger  islands  are 
of  immense  size,  and  they  rise  to  a  height  of  between 
three  and  four  thousand  feet.     The  flanks  of  these  as 
they  rise  are  studded  by  innumerable  orifices,  and  there 


THE  GA.LAPAG08.  379 

must  be  in  the  whole  archipelago  at  least  two  thousand 
craters.  These  craters  have  their  southern  Bides  either 
much  lower  than  the  other  Bides,  or  quite  broken  down 
and  removed  in  consequence  of  the  combined  action  of 
the  Pacific  Bwell  and  the  Bouthern  Trades.  Landing  on 
these  islands,  nothing  can  be  less  inviting  than  the  first 
appearance,  says  Mr.  Darwin.  A  broken  field  of  black 
basaltic  lava,  thrown  into  the  most  rugged  waves,  and 
crossed  by  great  fissures,  is  everywhere  covered  by  Btunted, 
sunburnt  brushwood,  which  Bhows  little  signs  of  life. 
The  dry  and  parched  surface,  heated  by  the  noonday 
sun,  gives  to  the  air  a  close  and  sultry  feeling,  like  that 
from  a  stove:  one  fancies  even  that  the  bushes  smell 
unpleasantly.  The  brushw 1  appears,  from  a  short  dis- 
tance, as  leafless  as  our  trees  during  winter,  even  when  it 
is  in  full  leaf,  nay,  for  the  most  part,  even  when  it  is  in 
flower.  The  entire  surface,  he  says  once,  -'•,■111-  to  have 
been  permeated  like  a  sieve  by  the  subterranean  vapours: 
here  and  there  the  lava,  while  Boft,  has  been  blown 
into  great  bubbles;  and  in  other  parts  the  tops  of  caverns 
similarly  formed  have  fallen  in,  leaving  circular  pits  with 
steep  sides.  Of  two  of  the  islands  Mr.  Darwin  reports: 
"Both  are  covered  with  immense  deluges  "!  Mack  naked 
lava,  which  have  flowed  either  over  the  rims  .,('  the  great 
caldrons,  like  pitch  over  the  rim  of  a  pot  in  winch  it  has 
been  boiled,  or  have  bursl  forth  from  the  smaller  orifices 
on  the  Hanks:  in  their  descent  they  have  spread  over 
miles  of  the  sea-coast."  "Scrambling  over  the  rough 
surface"  of  this  extraordinary  region  is  most  fatiguing, 
and  Mr.  Darwin  describes  how  horribly  disappointing  it 
is  when,  "choked  with  dust"  and  thirst,  one  "hurries 
down    the   cindery  slope  eagerly  to  drink"  from  some 

solitary  } 1  over  a  crater,  one  finds  he  has  in  his  mouth 

only  what  is  "-alt  as  brine."  As  one  walk-,  one  finds 
the  rocks  abound  with  great  black  lizards,  between  three 


380  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  NINETEENTH. 

and  four  feet  long,  and  on  the  hills  an  ugly  yellowish- 
brown  species  equally  common."      On  one  occasion,  "  as 
I  was  walking  along,"  he  says,  "  I  met  two  large  tortoises, 
each  of  which  must  have  weighed  at  least  two  hundred 
pounds  (more  than  1 4  stone) :  one  was  eating  a  piece  of 
cactus,  and  as  I  approached,  it  stared  at  me  and  slowly 
stalked  away ;  the  other  gave  a  deep  hiss,  and  drew  in 
its  head.     These  huge  reptiles,  surrounded  by  the  black 
lava,  the  leafless  shrubs  and  large  cacti,  seemed  to  my 
fancy  like  some   antediluvian   animals.     The   few  dull- 
coloured  birds  cared  no  more  for  me  than  they  did  for 
the  great  tortoises."     "We  have  a  great  deal  more  from 
Mr.  Darwin  about  these  huge  hideous  reptiles,  whether 
tortoises  or  lizards,  that  is  very  interesting  and  strange. 
Both  seem  to  swarm.     The  tortoises  for  food  are  open  to 
capture  at  any  time.     "It  is  said  that  formerly  single 
vessels  have  taken  away  as  many  as  seven  hundred,  and 
that  the  ship's  company  of  a  frigate  some  years  since 
brought  down  in  one  day  two  hundred  tortoises  to  the 
beach."     Vapour-crowned  volcanic  heights  studded  with 
orifices ;  miles  and  miles  of  black  lava,  red  scorise,  and  dusty 
cinders ;  great  black  or  yellow-hideous  lizards  sleeping 
in  the  sun ;  huge  monsters  of  tortoises  lazily  crawling 
along  paths  they  have  worn  through  centuries  to  where 
water  lies :  how  startling  it  must  be  in  the  midst  of  such 
lonely   weird  sights  as   these  to   come  suddenly  on  the 
ghastly  gleaming  skull  of  a  buccaneer  captain  who  had 
been  murdered  by  his  crew ! 

One  cannot  wonder  that  such  a  region  as  this  went 
to  the  heart  of  Mr.  Darwin,  and  remained  ever  afterwards 
with  him  a  constant  problem  of  the  most  intent  and 
absorbing  interest, — one  cannot  wonder  that  it  was  here 
he  found  the  motive  for  his  peculiar  theory.  The  spot 
was  solitary  and  remote ;  and  what  life  there  was  upon 
it,  seemed  to  have  for  him  only  a  strange,  unnatural,  and 


THE  GALAPAGOS.  38] 

old  -  world  look.  The  possible  influence  of  isolation, 
simply  as  isolation,  Mould  probably  firsl  occur  to  him; 
and  then,  perhaps,  the  question,  if  the  isolation  had  been 
the  source  of  so  many  changed  forms,  how  was  it  that 
there  were  others  which  had  remained  seemingly  un- 
changed? Such  conjectures  appear  at  least  not  alien  to 
the  genius  of  a  Darwin;  but  we  must  postpone  our  further 
consideration  of  these  matters  till  the  next  week. 


GLFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

The  action — South  American  types,  left  here  to  themselves,  change 
into  new  species  from  accumulation  of  their  own  individual 
spontaneous  differences — The  birds  — Differences  in  the  times 
and  modes  of  arrival  between  land  and  sea  birds — Carte  and 
tierce — Contradiction — Parried  by  a  word — An  advocate's  proof 
— The  printer  and  Mr.  Darwin's  woulds — The  sea-gull  —  The 
finches  —  Sir  William  Jardine — The  process  to  Darwin — What 
was  to  him  "  a  new  birth  " — Where  the  determinative  advantage 
for  these  different  beaks — The  individual  central  islands  not 
incommunicably  separate — French  birds  at  Dover — Isolation — 
Ex-contrario — Individual  difference  the  single  secret,  that  is 
the  "law"  which  has  been  "discovered"  of  "natural  selection' 
— Apply  influence  of  external  conditions  to  the  Galapagos- 
Kant — The  Galapagos  rat  and  mouse — New  beings  but  yet  the 
old  names — If  difference  goes  always  on  only  to  difference 
without  return  to  identity,  why  are  there  not  infinitely 
more  species  ? — Bowen  —  Darwin  only  empedoclean  —  Parsons 
— Lyell — Monsters  (giants  and  dwarfs)  sterile — Frederick's 
grenadiers,  the  pygmies  —  Divergent  species  at  home—  The 
Galapagos  but  the  Mr.  Jorkins  of  the  Darwinians — The  tortoise, 
where  did  it  come  from  1 — The  amblyrhyncus  similarly  inex- 
plicable— Lizards  of  the  secondary  epoch — The  Galapagos 
Islands  absolutely  without  a  vestige  of  the  struggle  for  life  in 
any  direction — The  breeder,  and  nature,  can  act  only  on  what 
is  already  there — The  breeder  deals  in  identity,  not  difference, 
and  his  breeds  would  all  turn  back  to  the  original — No  breeder 
a  new  species — Nature  acts  not  on  Darwin's  method,  but  design 
— Toothed  birds,  the  hipparion,  the  otter-sheep — Accidental 
individual  difference  to  be  the  sole  creator  in  the  end  of  all 
that  enormous  and  infinitely  complicated  concert  to  unity! — 
Farewell. 

Being  now  possessed  of  some  idea  of  the  scene  of  the 
action,  we  may  proceed  forthwith  to  this  latter  itself. 


SOUTH  AMERICAN  TYPES.  383 

And  that  is,  to  this  sole  effect:  That  South  American 
types  of  life  became,  in  process  of  time,  specifically 
changed  in  these  islands  of  the  Galapagos,  in  consequence 
of  their  isolation,  as  well  partial  as  total.  The  types 
particularly  selected  to  be  dwelt  on  are  the  birds.  "In 
the  Galapagos  Islands,"  says  Mr.  Darwin  in  the  Origin 
(348),  "there  are  26  land-birds;  of  these  21  (or  perhaps 
23)  are  peculiar,  whereas  of  the  11  marine  birds  only  2 
are  peculiar ; "  and  this  difference  Air.  Darwin  explained 
by  difference  in  the  numbers  of  the  immigration  and 
in  the  times  of  it.  "Species,"  he  said,  "occasionally 
arriving  after  long  intervals  of  time  in  a  new  and  isolated 
district,  and  having  to  compete  with  new  associates, 
would  be  eminently  liable  to  modification,  and  would 
often  produce  groups  of  modified  descendants."  "We  are 
to  understand,  that  is,  this  to  have  been  the  case  with 
the  land-birds:  they  only  "  occasionally  "  arrived  "after 
long  intervals  of  time,"  and  they  had  to  "compete  with 
new  associates."  As  for  the  sea-birds,  the  excess  of  m>n- 
modification  in  them  was  due,  it  is  said,  "partly"  to 
their  "  having  immigrated  in  a  body,  so  that  their 
mutual  relations  were  not  much  disturbed,"  and  "partly 
to  the  frequent  arrival  of  unmodified  immigrants  from 
the  mother-country,  with  which  the  insular  forms  have 
intercrossed."  We  see  here  that  invariable  felicity  of 
Mr.  Darwin  that,  if  there  is  a  foin  in  carte,  it  is  as 
swiftly  followed  up  by  a  fence  in  tierce.  Few  immi- 
grants, at  long  intervals,  give  us  modification — carte  ;  but 
many  immigrants,  at  frequent  intervals,  quite  as  much 
withdraw  modification — tierce!  .Air.  Darwin  blows  hut 
and  cold  with  equal  vigour.  It  i-  <>nl\  fair  to  observe, 
however,  that  Air.  Darwin  has  a  reason  why  sea-birds 
have  immigrated  differently  from  land-birds.  "  It  is 
obvious,"  he  says,  "that  marine  birds  could  arrive  at 
these  islands  much  more  easily  and  frequently  than  land- 


384  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

birds."  But  even  here,  in  his  own  facts,  is  there  not 
pretty  well  his  own  contradiction  ?  If  marine  birds  can 
immigrate  more  easily  and  frequently  than  land-birds,  it 
at  least  sounds  strange  that,  while  there  are  26  of  the 
land,  there  are  only  11  of  the  sea.  It  is  quite  possible, 
of  course,  as  regards  new  species  that  the  many  come 
from  the  few,  and,  contrariwise,  the  few  from  the  many. 
No  one  can  doubt,  at  any  rate,  that  Mr.  Darwin's 
ingenuity  could  make  it  appear  so.  He  can  find  a  word 
at  any  moment  that  is  an  open  sesamb  to  any  difficulty. 
He  says  himself  that,  from  end  to  end  of  it,  his  Origin 
of  Species  is  "  one  long  argument."  And  so  it  is ! 
From  end  to  end  of  it,  it  is  what  the  Germans  call  an 
Advocatcnbcweis :  from  end  to  end  of  it,  it  is  an  advocate's 
proof.  Even  in  what  lies  at  this  moment  before  us,  just 
in  the  same  way  as  we  saw  already,  he  that  continues  to 
read  will  find  almost  every  proposition  conditioned  by  a 
vjould.  It  is  always  this  would  take  place,  and  that 
would  take  place.  In  point  of  actual  fact,  there  are  so 
many  moulds  in  Mr.  Darwin's  books  on  natural  selection, 
that  one  may  be  forgiven  if  one  finds  oneself  speculating, 
with  some  curiosity,  about  the  resources  of  a  printer's 
fount.  In  this  reference,  and  as  concerns  the  many 
from  the  few  or  the  few  from  the  many,  would  it  be 
unfair  to  say  that  one  would  not  expect  such  an  animal 
as  a  gull  to  be  one  of  the  only  two  remarkably  modified 
sea-birds  ?  One  would  expect  it  to  arrive  always  in  very 
large  numbers,  and  on  occasions  of  very  frequent 
occurrence.  From  the  known  habits  of  the  gull,  one 
would  expect  this  almost  more  in  its  case  than  in  that  of 
any  other  sea-bird — one  would  really,  least  of  all,  expect 
the  gull  to  be  the  exceptional  sea-bird  to  display  in  the 
Galapagos  even  as  much  modification  as  the  land-birds. 
Mr.  Darwin  himself  cannot  help  exclaiming  here,  "  Con- 
sidering the  wandering  habits  of  the  gulls,  I  was  surprised 


THE  FINCHES.  385 

to  find  that  the  species  inhabiting  these  islands  is 
peculiar."  It  is  a  situation  and  a  circumstance  naturally 
to  give  exit  to  a  whole  flight  of  woulds  and  would  nots ! 
{Journal,  380). 

But  if  the  birds  at  the  Galapagos  are  peculiarly 
selected  for  remark,  of  these  it  is  the  finches  that,  as 
Mr.  Darwin  would  have  it,  are  specially  to  be  considered. 
"  Ornithology — curious  finches,"  are  his  own  words  in 
the  heading  of  the  chapter  in  his  Journal.  Of  the  twenty- 
six  land-birds,  in  fact,  the  finches  are  so  remarkable  that 
they  constitute  one  half  of  them.  In  the  Oalapagos 
Islands  there  are  no  less  than  thirteen  new  species  of 
finches;  and  Mr.  Darwin  is  so  much  impressed  with 
them  that  he  illustrates  his  description  of  them  in  the 
Journal  by  actual  drawings  of  them.  I  have  the  book 
here,  and  they  may  be  seen.  The  figures  given  are  very 
evidently  heads  of  finches  even  as  we  know  them  in  this 
country.  No.  1  refers  to  the  Gcospiza  magnirostris,  and  is 
distinguished  by  a  very  full  large  beak.  The  beak  of 
No.  2,  the  Geospiza  fortis,  is  less  large,  but  still  strong. 
That  of  No.  3,  the  Geospiza  parvula,  is  very  much  Buch 
as  we  may  see  in  our  own  finches,  sparrows,  or  even 
canaries.  The  beak  of  No.  4  is  small  and  sharp,  almost 
as  in  our  own  wrens.  Between  Nos.  1  and  3,  it  appears, 
there  is  not  only  one,  but  actually  six  intermediate 
species.  "The  perfectly  graduated  series  in  the  size  of 
their  beaks,"  Mr.  Darwin  calls  "a  probable  consequence 
of  their  numbers;"  and  it  is  by  reason  of  these  numbers 
that  "one  might  really  fancy,"  he  says,  "  that  from  an 
original  paucity  of  birds  in  this  archipelago,  one  species 
had  been  taken  and  modified  for  different  ends."  Now. 
in  these  four  finch  heads  we  have  what,  in  the  mind  of 
Mr.  Darwin,  was  the  motive  and  the  generative  speck  of 
the  whole  ultimate  theory.  Because  he  found  in  these 
islands  so   many   finches,  and   in  the   different  islands 

2b 


386  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

different  ones,  Mr.  Darwin  was  led  to  speculate  on  their 
possible  origin.  There  was  a  common  analogy  in  all  of 
them ;  and  that  analogy  was  an  analogy  that  bore  only 
on  a  certain  South  American  type.  The  obvious  in- 
ference, accordingly,  was  that  all  these  finches,  however 
much  they  were  modified,  had  been  actually  modified,  one 
and  all  of  them,  out  of  a  single  characteristic  type ;  and 
that  type  was  to  be  found  only  in  South  America.  As 
one  sees,  it  is  at  once  assumed  here  that  the  thirteen 
different  finches  constitute  or  represent  thirteen  different 
species ;  and,  consequently,  the  first  thing  it  occurs  to  us 
to  ask  is,  What  is  a  species  ?  We  remember  how  Mr. 
Darwin  was  himself  put  to  it  to  determine  a  species  in  his 
Cirrepedes,  and  how  he  needs  must  laugh  at  his  brother 
naturalists  in  the  same  endeavour  generally.  We  are 
told  that,  be  the  differences  what  they  may,  these  birds 
always  bear  to  each  other  the  closest  resemblance.  The 
thirteen  males  are  all  black,  the  thirteen  females  are  all 
brown,  and  they  are  to  be  found,  all,  or  the  most  of  them, 
feeding  together.  We  really  should  like  to  know  if  they 
cannot  pair  together.  Mr.  Darwin  is  chagrined  ;  but  it 
does  not,  at  least  at  first  sight,  seem  unnatural  that  Sir 
William  Jardine,  I  suppose  the  greatest  ornithological 
authority,  thought  that  "  some  of  the  Galapagos  so-called 
species  ought  to  be  called  varieties,"  and  that  "  some  of 
the  sub-genera,  supposed  to  be  wholly  endemic,  have  been 
found  on  the  continent "  (ii.  246).  On  the  whole,  we 
really  should  like  to  know  on  what  it  was  that  the 
specific  difference  turned  for  Mr.  Darwin  himself.  This 
is  plain  that,  if  they  were  not  species,  and  species  en- 
demic to  the  Galapagos,  Mr.  Darwin  must  have  made  a 
bad  start.  But  suppose  them  species,  and  that  they  were 
not  specially  or  directly  created,  as  seems  to  Mr.  Darwin 
(though  not  to  us),  the  only  other  alternative,  how  does 
he  conceive  his  own  process  of  modification,  the  pullula- 


THE  SEPARATION  OF  THE  ISLANDS.  387 

tion  of  differences,  to  have  naturally  evolved  them  ?  As 
we  see,  and  as  is  insisted  on,  they  vary  in  their  beaks. 
Is  it  there  that  Air.  Darwin  finds  his  peculiar  pulse  ? 
In  the  Life  and  Letters,  he  expressly  exemplifies  to  us 
what  he  would  call  "  a  new  birth."  It  is  "  a  lard  born 
with  a  beak  ~th  of  an  inch  longer  than  usual."  That, 
evidently,  to  him  is  a  good  instance  of  the  first  step  in  a 
pullulation  of  differences.  May  we  suppose,  then,  that 
he  sees  the  beaks  of  these  finches  pullulate  and  pullulate 
into  the  new  species  which  he  describes  and  draws  in  his 
book  ?  If  Mr.  Darwin  asserts  it,  we  cannot  deny  it. 
But  When  we  look  at  his  own  pictures,  great  beaks,  strong 
beaks,  small  beaks,  tiny  beaks,  may  we  be  allowed  to  ask 
on  which  side  we  shall  assume  the  determinative  "  ad- 
vantage "  to  lie — the  determinative  "  advantage  "  that  is 
always  postulated  in  the  theory  ?  Shall  it  be  the  great 
beaks  that  have  pullulated  into  strength,  or  shall  it  be 
the  small  beaks  that  have  pullulated  into  fineness  ?  We 
know  that  Mr.  Darwin  regards  the  isolation  of  these 
islands  precisely  as  the  one  determining  condition  of  this 
growth  of  species.  But  that  being  so,  we  cannot  but 
recognise  that  his  very  condition  must  blow  quite  as 
vigorously  cold  as  hot— fence  quite  as  securely  in  tierce 
as  in  carte.  If  the  strong  and  great  are  clue  to  it,  so 
also  are  the  small  and  fine.  Mr.  Darwin  sees  so  much 
potency  in  the  isolation,  and  lays  so  much  stress  on  it, 
that  he  attributes  to  it,  not  only  the  general  difference  of 
life  in  the  archipelago  from  life  on  the  continent,  but 
even  the  individual  difference  of  life  on  one  island  as 
compared  with  life  on  another.  "By  far  the  must 
remarkable  feature  in  the  natural  history  of  this  archi- 
pelago is,  that  the  different  islands  to  a  considerable 
extent  are  inhabited  by  a  different  set  of  beings"  (:'.,.>4); 
"  Several  of  the  islands  possess  their  own  species"  (397)  ; 
"Different  islands  have  their  representatives  of  Geospvsa  '' 


388  CIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

the  finch  (395).     To  such  expressions  as  these   Mr. 

Darwin  adds  others  to  the  effect  that,  in  his  belief,  these 
islands  are   incommunicably  cut   off  the  one  from  the 
other.     This  latter  circumstance,  as  in  the  interest  of  the 
view  which  it  is  his  dearest  wish  to  impress,  he  is  even 
at  some  pains,  in  his  usual  colouring  way,  at  least  to 
accentuate.     In  the  Origin,  these  islands,  he  says,  "  are 
separated  by  deep  arms  of  the  sea,  in  most  cases  wider 
than  the  British  Channel :  the  currents  of  the  sea  are 
rapid,  and  sweep  between  the  islands,  and  gales  of  wind 
are   extraordinarily   rare ;    so    that   the  islands  are   far 
more   effectually  separated  from   each  other   than  they 
appear    on    a    map."       Now,  as    regards   distances,  the 
statement  here  must  be  confined  to  what  I  have  called 
the  outlying  islands:    it  is  wholly  out  of   place  when 
referred    to    those   in    the    centre.      At    most,    five    or 
six  miles  will  bring  all  the  latter  into  connection,  the 
one     with    the    other;    and    these     five    or    six    miles 
concern  only  the  separation  of  two  from  the  other  five 
islands,    while,    otherwise,    all    are    very    much    nearer 
each   other   than  even    five    or    six   miles.     The   Gala- 
pagos   Islands,  therefore,  specially   at    least   those  that 
constitute  Mr.  Darwin's  references,  are  not  separated  by 
arms  of  the  sea  "  in  most  cases  wider  than  the  British 
Channel,"  which  is  a  gap  of  twenty-five  miles.     Then  the 
currents  between  may  be  "  rapid  ; "  but,  in  that  respect, 
they  must  vary  much  with  different  states  of  the  tides. 
Lastly,  as  regards  gales  of  wind,  they  may  be  "  rare ; " 
but  the  very  phrase  allows  them  from  time  to  time  to 
exist.     Nay,  the  very  lizards  would  seem,  numerous  as 
they  are,  to  be  somewhat  dependent  on  storms  for  their 
support.      "  They  consume,"  says  Mr,  Darwin,  "  much  of 
the  succulent  cactus,  the  branches  of  which  are  occasionally 
broken  off  by  the  wind  !  "      We  may  remember,  too,  that 
the  craters  on  these  islands  have  their  windward  sides 


FRENCH  BIRDS  AT  DOVER.  389 

"  either  much  lower  than  the  other  sides,  or  quite  broken 
down  and  removed  in  consequence  of  the  combined 
action  of  the  Pacific  swell  and  the  southern  Trades." 
Gales  of  wind,  then,  may  be  "  extraordinarily  rare  ;  "  but 
they  do  happen,  and  we  can  hardly  conclude  with  Mr. 
Darwin,  from  the  mere  rarity  of  them,  that  "  neither  the 
birds,  insects,  nor  lighter  seeds  would  be  blown  from 
island  to  island."  On  the  contrary,  it  does  seem  precisely 
certain  that  seeds,  insects,  and  birds  would,  from  time  to 
time,  not  possibly  escape  being  blown  from  island  to 
island.  But  what  of  the  prevailing  serenity  and  calm  ? 
Mr.  Darwin  describes,  in  the  Origin  (356),  many  of  the 
birds  as  specially  well  adapted  for  flying  from  island  to 
island :  are  we  to  suppose  that  two,  or  three,  or  five,  or 
six  miles  would  not,  in  such  circumstances,  prove  to  all 
such  birds  rather  a  temptation  and  an  attraction  than  an 
intimidation  and  restraint  ?  Even  the  British  Channel 
was  but  a  step  to  the  French  birds  that  covered  the  cliffs 
of  Dover  when  libcrtt,  6galiU,  fratemiU  took,  during 
the  Bevolution,  to  slaughtering  them.  On  the  whole, 
whether  we  look  to  Mr.  Darwin's  own  measures  or  to 
Mr.  Darwin's  own  facts,  we  are  without  any  warrant  to 
conclude  that,  in  the  Galapagos,  island,  isolated  from 
island,  stands  a  region  of  its  own. 

For  the  most  part,  Mr.  Darwin  is  very  resolute  in  his 
faith  in  isolation  as  a  main  element  or  agency  in  the 
birth  of  species ;  but  there  are  times,  especially  latterly, 
when  he  actually  seems  to  vacillate.  He  writes  to 
Hooker  in  1844  :  "  Isolation  is  the  chief  concomitant  or 
cause  of  the  appearance  of  new  forms."  As  late  as  1876, 
"  it  would  have  been  a  strange  fact,"  he  exclaims  (iii 
159),  "if  I  had  overlooked  the  importance  of  isolation, 
seeing  it  was  such  cases  as  that  of  the  Galapagos  which 
chiefly  led  me  to  study  the  origin  of  species."  Still, 
four  years  earlier,  we  can  get  such  an  avowal  as  this  from 


390  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

him  (iii.  156):  "I  rejoice  to  think  that  I  formerly  said 
as  emphatically  as  I  could,  that  neither  isolation  nor 
time  by  themselves  do  anything  for  the  modification  of 
species."  What,  however,  is  really  emphatical  here 
ought  to  fall  on  the  words  "  by  themselves."  The 
declaration  alluded  to  occurs  in  the  fourth  chapter  of 
the  Origin.  There  we  find  isolation  described  as  "  an 
important  element  in  the  modification  of  species,"  but 
not  as  an  absolutely  necessary  and  indispensable  element. 
It  is  only  important  as  giving  the  chance  for  variation. 
That,  too,  is  the  role  of  time  in  the  process  ;  and,  says  Mr. 
Darwin,  "  it  has  been  erroneously  asserted  that  the 
element  of  time  has  been  assumed  by  me  to  play  an  all- 
important  part  in  modifying  species,  as  if  all  the  forms  of 
life  were  necessarily  undergoing  change  through  some  innate 
law."  No  ;  it  is  neither  isolation,  nor  time,  nor  "  innate- 
law  "  that  shall  be  allowed  to  interfere  with  what  to  Mr. 
Darwin,  as  to  Mr.  Huxley,  is  the  central  idea  and 
quintessence  of  the  system,  individual  difference.  That — 
individual  difference — is  the  law  of  natural  selection 
which  has  been  discovered;  and  years  only  corroborate  and 
confirm  Mr.  Darwin's  allegiance  to  the  purity  ot  it.  So 
it  is  that  he  says  in  1876  (iii.  159) — no  doubt  with 
isolation  in  his  mind — "  I  cannot  doubt  that  many  new 
species  have  been  simultaneously  developed  within  the 
same  large  continental  area ;  "  while,  two  years  later,  as 
regards  individual  difference  he  writes  (iii.  161)  in  this 
strong  way :  "  As  our  knowledge  advances  very  slight 
differences,  considered  by  sytematists  as  of  no  importance 
in  structure,  are  continually  found  to  be  functionally 
important."  Evidently,  it  is  more  and  more  what  de- 
pends on  difference  that  occupies  his  thought  and  absorbs 
his  attention.  Nevertheless  it  was  certainly  isolation  in 
the  first  place,  the  isolation  of  the  Galapagos,  that 
availed  to  suggest  to  him  the  possibility  of  new  species 


KANT.  391 

forming  themselves,  or  being  formed,  on  the  ordinary 
terms  that  are  usual  in  nature.  Then,  undoubtedly,  it 
had  appeared  to  him  that  a  changing  organism,  if  left  to 
itself,  uncrossed  and  uninterfered  with,  would  be  in  the 
precise  position  favourable  for  the  transmutation  of  itself 
into  a  new  species.  Isolation  might  not  create  species, 
or  could  not  create  species,  but  it  would  be  at  all  events 
the  peculiar  feeding-ground  in  which  species,  through 
the  manifestation  and  accumulation  of  difference,  would 
create  itself. 

If  it  is  in  the  interest  of  modification,  difference, 
as  the  centre  of  the  theory,  that  Mr.  Darwin  may  seem 
somewhat  to  vacillate  as  regards  isolation,  we  may 
recollect  that  we  saw  some  similar  vacillation  in  respect 
to  external  conditions.  In  the  first  instance  he  appeared 
to  have  an  implacable  aversion  to  all  such  conditions 
as  climate,  etc.,  having  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
modification  of  organisms.  By  and  by,  as  to  Moritz 
Wagner  in  1876,  he  admits  that,  in  regard  to  "the 
direct  action  of  the  environment,  there  is  now  a  large 
body  of  evidence."  Well,  now,  is  there  any  reason  why 
we  may  not  apply  that  here  ?  Everything  was  strange 
and  new  in  these  islands — how  strange,  how  new  ! 
Craters  and  caverns,  and  black  lava,  and  red  scoria;,  and 
salt  pools — suffocating  heat — brown  brushwood  even 
when  in  flower,  that  smelt  sickly — huge  tortoises  crawl- 
ing, more  than  fourteen  stone  in  weight — big  black  and 
yellow  lizards  on  the  rocks  or  in  the  cinders  by  thousands 
— how  could  we  expect  to  find  anything  whatever  the 
same  here?  "In  birds  of  the  same  species  which  have 
to  live  in  different  climates,"  says  Kant  (JJ'jr.  vi.  321), 
"there  are  provisions  for  the  growth  of  a  new  (Mating  of 
feathers,  should  certain  of  them  inhabit  a  cold  climate, 
which  provisions,  however,  in  a  temperate  climate,  are 
kept  in  reserve.     Since  wheat,  in  a  cold  country,  must 


392  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

have  more  protection  from  wet  and  cold  than  in  a  dry 
and  warm  one,  it  possesses  a  natural  capability  of  cloth- 
ing itself  in  a  gradually  thicker  integument.  This 
forethought  of  nature,  by  calculated  precautions,  to 
prepare  its  creature  for  all  future  contingencies,  in  order 
that  it  may  preserve  itself  and  adapt  itself  to  the  diver- 
sity of  climate  and  soil,  is  a  just  subject  of  wonder,  and, 
with  the  migrations  and  transplantations  of  animals  and 
plants,  gives  rise  to  new  species  in  appearance,  which 
are  nothing  else  than  races  and  varieties  of  the  same 
kind,  the  natural,  inborn  capacities  of  which  have 
variously  developed  themselves  in  long  periods  of  time 
according  to  occasion."  Thus,  then,  for  the  production 
of  apparent  new  species,  Kant  points  to  innate  original 
nature  as  respondent  to  the  influence  of  the  varying 
external  conditions ;  whereas  Mr.  Darwin,  for  an  equal 
result,  depends  on  "accumulation  of  individual  differ- 
ences," and  that,  too,  only  "  spontaneously,"  only  by 
"  accident,"  only  by  "  chance,"  as,  for  example,  in  "  a 
bird  born  with  a  beak  j^th  of  an  inch  longer  than  usual." 
But,  after  all,  was  not  Mr.  Darwin  coming  round  to 
Kant's  way  of  it,  when,  as  late  as  1876,  he  confesses 
(iii.  159):  "In  my  opinion  the  greatest  error  which  I 
have  committed,  has  been  not  allowing  sufficient  weight 
to  the  direct  action  of  environment,  i.e.  food,  climate," 
etc.  ?  In  his  earlier  days,  indeed,  Mr.  Darwin  did 
admit  as  much  as  this  even  for  the  Galapagos.  He 
found  in  them,  he  says,  only  two  mammals,  a  rat  and 
a  mouse.  The  rat  has  evidently  been  imported,  Mr. 
Darwin  says,  and  "  is  merely  a  variety,  produced  by  the 
new  and  peculiar  climate,  food,  and  soil  to  which  it  has 
been  subjected"  (378);  nor,  as  regards  the  mouse,  are 
we  left  in  any  doubt  that  his  opinion  was  identical. 
Now,  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us  in  the  Origin  (113),  that  the 
rat  and  the  mouse  "  have  been  transported  by  man  to 


THE  GALAPAGOS  RAT  AND  MOUSE.  393 

many  parts  of  the  world;  they  live  under  the  cold 
climate  of  Faroe  in  the  north  and  of  the  Falklands  in 
the  south,  and  on  many  an  island  in  the  torrid  zones." 
If,  then,  the  strange  environment  of  the  Galapagos  could 
so  change  forms  so  persistent  as  these,  that  the  one  may 
almost  he  allowed  to  rank,  and  the  other  does  rank,  as  a 
new  species,  why  Bhonld  we  resort  to  a  different  genesis 
for  the  birds  and  the  rest?  Mr.  Darwin  says  of  these 
islands  (Journal,  '■'•17  and  393)  that  in  them  "a  vast 
majority  of  all  the  land  animals,  and  more  than  half  of 
the  flowering  plants,  are  aboriginal  productions  :  it  was 
most  striking  to  be  surrounded  by  new  birds,  new 
reptiles,  new  shells,  new  insects,  new  plants!"  Mr. 
Darwin  says  this;  he  calls  all  these  animals  and  plants 
new;  and  yet  he  gives  to  the  whole  of  them  all  the  old 
names!  Of  the  twenty-six  birds,  thirteen  are  finches, 
three  are  mocking  thrushes,  and  three  tyrant  fly-catchers, 
two  are  owls,  and  two  are  swallows;  there  are  a  hawk, 
and  a  wren,  and  a  dove.  If  the  animals  themselves 
are  new,  and  if,  as  Mr.  Darwin  says  also,  "most  of 
the  organic  productions  are  aboriginal  creations,  found 
nowhere  else,"  so  that  "  we  seem  to  be  brought  somewhat 
near  to  that  great  fact — that  mystery  of  mysteries — the 
first  appearance  of  new  beings  on  this  earth"  (378), — 
how  is  it  that  we  have  in  our  ears  all  the  old  familiar 
sounds,  and  see  before  our  eyes  only  all  the  old  familiar 
names?  New  creations  should  be  new  creations,  and 
quite  unlike  the  old — new  creations,  consequently,  sin  add 
have  names  of  their  own,  and  not  only  misleadingly 
carry  the  appellatives  of  creations  past.  If,  indeed,  the 
peculiarities  here  have  led  Mr.  Darwin  to  the  discovery 
of  the  true  rationale  of  creation,  how  is  it  that  we  have 
more  to  surprise  us  than  even  this  Btrange  matter  of 
names  \ — how  is  it  that  new  creations  are  not  much 
more    common    experiences  {      In    each    of    the    million 


39-i  GIFFOED  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

upon  million  of  individuals  that  exist  always  and  every- 
where upon  our  globe  an  accumulation  of  differences 
ought  to  be  going  on  constantly — ought  to  be  the  one 
event ;  and  species,  consequently,  ought,  by  this  time 
of  day,  to  be  absolutely  innumerable.  Something  like 
this  objection  has  been  already  made  to  Mr.  Darwin  ; 
and,  though  he  says  little,  I  think  he  shows  himself 
sensitive  to  it.  Professor  Bowen  of  Harvard  writes 
once,  "  If  the  doctrine  were  true,  geological  strata  would 
be  full  of  monsters  which  have  failed."  Whereat  Mr. 
Darwin  contemptuously  scoffs :  "  A  very  clear  view 
this  writer "  (whom  he  afterwards  styles  "  a  singularly 
unobservant  man  ")  "  had  of  the  struggle  for  existence  " 
(ii.  304,  372)!  We  have  only  here  again,  however,  the 
earliest — the  Greek— suggestion  of  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence and  the  survival  of  the  fittest  unwittingly  come 
upon  by  Mr.  Darwin.  Empedocles  fabled,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  all  sorts  of  organisms  spontaneously  take  birth, 
but  only  those  survive  which  are  fit ;  and  that  is  pre- 
cisely the  import  of  Mr.  Darwin's  scoff  to  Bowen :  In 
the  struggle  for  existence,  namely,  monsters  would  dis- 
appear. Professor  Parsons,  also  of  Harvard,  seems  to 
have  repeated  Bowen's  objection.  Mr.  Darwin  calls  his 
whole  paper  "worth  nothing"  (ii.  331);  but  at  the 
same  time  he  writes,  on  the  same  day,  to  another  corre- 
spondent, "  If  you  see  Professor  Parsons,  will  you  thank 
him  for  the  extremely  liberal  and  fair  spirit  in  which  his 
essay  is  written  ?  Please  tell  him  I  reflected  much  on 
the  chance  of  favourable  monstrosities,"  etc.  Now  these 
two  professors  are  outsiders ;  but  it  is  a  strange  thing 
that  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who  is  no  outsider,  makes  also 
to  Mr.  Darwin  precisely  the  same  objection  (ii.  290). 
'  You  ask  (I  see),"  writes  Darwin  to  Lyell,  "  why  we  do 
not  have  monstrosities  in  higher  animals  ?  but  when  they 
live    they   are   almost    always   sterile   (even  giants   and 


THE  GRENADIERS THE  PYGMIES.  395 

dwarfs  are  generally  sterile)."  There  is  a  little  addition 
here — sterility — to  the  Empedoclean  idea;  but  may  we 
not  attempt  to  take  the  point  off  it,  in  Mr.  Darwin's  own 
manner,  by  counter-instances?  To  say  "generally"  is 
to  say  too  much;  for  we  know  that  the  inhabitants  of 
Potsdam  are  a  tall  race,  inasmuch  as  they  are  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Prussian  king's  seven-foot,  eight-foot, 
and  nine-foot  grenadiers;  and  as  for  dwarfs,  we  are  just 
on  the  point  of  hearing  from  Mr.  Stanley  about  a  whole 
nation  of  such,  who,  under  the  name  of  pygmies,  have 
been  fighting  the  cranes  since  the  beginning  of  history  ! 

But  as  regards  the  Galapagos  organisms  bearing  the 
same  names  as  those  elsewhere — as  regards   the  Gala- 
pagos birds,  for  example,  being  for  the  most  part  finches, 
one  wonders  that  Mr.  Darwin  should  have  had  any  call 
to  find  his  idea  only  in  them  or  their  neighbours.      We 
have  plenty  of  divergent  species — finches,  wrens,  linnets, 
etc. — at  home.     "Why  go  so  far  afield  for  an  idea   that 
we  may  find  within  our  own  doors?     Nay,  what,  after 
all,  does  the  whole  thing  come  to  ?     How  is  it  that  we 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  that  mystery  of  mysteries, 
creation,  any  more  here  than,  absolutely,  anywhere  else  ? 
No  doubt  Mr.  Darwin's  words  have  a  peculiar  excitation 
for  us — "somewhat  near  to  that   mystery  of  mysteries, 
the  first  appearance  of  new  beings  on  this  earth  '. "     We 
breathlessly  read  further,  we  feel  an  awe  as   though  on 
the  point  of  seeing  the  very  veil  at  last   upraised   from 
the  countenance  of  the  universe,  the  secret  of  the  birth 
of  all  the  beings  that  have  lived,  the  secret  of  the  birth 
of  man — is  it  any  wonder  that  we  are  coerced,  and  con- 
strained, and  surprised  into  a  mere  "  pshaw  !  "  in  the  end, 
when  all  that  we  come  to  are  these  four  Bnchea  !     It 
has  been  well  for  the  friends  of  Mr.   Darwin   that    the 
Galapagos   archipelago   has   been    kept,  as    the    ultimate 
referee,  only  in  its  own  cloud.      It   was  uncommonly  con- 


396  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

venient  for  Mr.  Spenlow,  in  David  Coppcrficld,  to  be  able 
on  occasion  to  point  conclusively  upstairs  to  the  unseen 
Mr.  Jorkins.  Once  seen,  however,  the  terrible  Mr. 
Jorkins  proved  to  be  the  most  harmless  of  mortals. 
Even  so  the  Galapagos,  when  seen,  are  not  seen  to  take 
us  one  step  nearer  the  mystery  of  life.  We  have  seen 
what  has  been  said  of  the  birds  ;  but  is  it  any  better  with 
the  reptiles  ?  The  huge  tortoise  is  called  "  aboriginal ;  " 
"  it  is  found  nowhere  else  in  this  quarter  of  the  world ; " 
"  it  may  be  questioned,"  Mr.  Darwin  avows,  "  whether  it 
is  in  any  other  place  an  aboriginal."  One  asks  with 
astonishment,  then,  where  did  it  come  from  ?  No  South 
American  type  will  account  for  it  here.  And,  pullula- 
tion  of  individual  differences !  are  we  to  suppose  that  it 
pullulated  out  of  the  bare  rock  ?  Of  what  avail  is  the  whole 
theory  in  such  a  case  ?  Then  are  we  one  whit  better  off 
with  the  lizard,  the  amblyrhyncus  ?  Mr.  Darwin  speaks  of 
its  progenitor  "  arriving  "  at  the  Galapagos ;  but  he  adds, 
"  from  what  country  it  is  impossible  to  say,  as  its  affinity, 
I  believe,  is  not  very  clear  to  any  known  species "  (ii. 
336).  That  is,  he  has  no  warrant  but  his  own  sup- 
position for  speaking  of  it  as  even  "  arriving."  He  warns 
the  geologist  who  may  "  refer  back  in  his  mind  "  to  the 
monstrous  lizards  of  the  Secondary  epochs,  "  that  this 
archipelago,  instead  of  possessing  a  humid  climate  and 
rank  vegetation,  as  was  the  case  then,  cannot  be  considered 
otherwise  than  extremely  arid,  and,  for  an  equatorial  region, 
remarkably  temperate."  From  Secondary  lizard  to  Gala- 
pagos lizard,  were  connection  even  possible,  that  is  a  vast 
difference,  an  incalculable  difference,  is  it  possible  to  sup- 
pose that  the  pullulation  of  difference  could  ever  bridge  it  ? 
We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Darwin  speaks  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  as  an  essential  element  of  the  theory,  and 
we  know  it  otherwise  to  be  such ;  what  countenance, 
then,  does  the  very  feeding  ground,  and  breeding  ground, 


OF  THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  LIFE — NOT  A  VESTIGE.       307 

and  originating  ground  of  natural  selection  show  it  f1 
Why,  none  absolutely  none.*  Throughout  the  whole  of 
the  Galapagos  archipelago  there  is  not  a  vestige  of  the 
struggle  for  existence — not  a  trace!  We  have  attempted 
to  make  good  that  there  are  storms  of  wind;  but  th< 

Mr.  Darwin  Bays,  are  "extraordinarily  rare."  Then 
there  is  heat,  but  it  is  temperate,  and,  for  the  most  part, 
there  is  no  rain.  The  birds  live  there,  if  anywhere  on 
earth,  in  perfectly  halcyon  weather,  and  they  have  all 
food;  they  have  never  the  slightest  occasion  in  that 
respect  to  afifecl  the  slightest  quarrel  with  one  another. 
Nor  is  it  otherwise  with  the  only  other  inhabitants,  tin- 
lizards  and  tortoises.  "The  numbers  of  individuals  of 
each  species  are  extraordinarily  great."  Of  the  lizards, 
Mr.  Darwin  remarks,  their  numbers  are  such  that  "we 
could  not  for  some  time  find  a  spot  tree  from  their  bur- 
rows on  which  to  pitch  our  tent."  ''This  reptile,"  la- 
says,  "has  no  enemy  whatever  on  shore."  "They  are 
not  at  all  timorous."  As  they  crawl, "  they  often  stop 
and  do/e  for  a  minute  or  two."  "  I  have  seen,"  say-  Mr 
Darwin,  "  these  lizards  and  the  huge  tortoises  feeding 
together."  "I  have  seen,"  he  says  again,  "one  of  the 
thick-billed  finches  picking  at  one  end  of  a  piece  of 
cactus,  while  a  lizard  was  eating  at  the  other  end;  and 
afterwards  the  little  bird,  with  the  utmost  indifference, 
hopped  on  the  back  of  the  reptile."  Only  "if  two  are 
placed  on  the  ground  and  held  together,  they  will  fight 
and  bite  each  other;  but  I,"  adds  Mr.  Darwin,  "caught 
many  by  the  tail,  and  they  never  tried  to  bite  nie." 
The  tortoises  have  "broad  ami  well-beaten  paths  in  everj 
direction  from  the  wells  down  to  the  sea-coast  :  it  was  a 
curious  spectacle  to  behold  many  of  these  huge  creati 
one  set  eagerly  travelling  onwards  with  outstretched 
necks,  and  another  set  returning  after  having  drunk  their 
fill."    "  I  frequently  got  on  their  backs/'  Bays  Mr.  Darwin, 


398  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

"  and  then  giving  a  few  raps  on  the  hinder  part  of  their 
shells,  they  would  rise  up  and  walk  away."  The  female 
"  drops  her  eggs  indiscriminately  in  any  hole" — she  has 
no  fear  for  them  !  To  this  entire  scene  of  peace,  and 
calm,  and  indolent  enjoyment  it  cannot  be  said  that  even 
the  hawk,  "  the  carrion-feeding  buzzard  "  as  it  is  otherwise 
called,  is  a  single  exception ;  for  only  the  young,  newly- 
hatched  tortoises  are  its  prey.  As  for  the  old  ones,  they 
"  seem  generally  to  die  from  accidents,  as  from  falling 
down  precipices."  It  is  maintained  that  nobody  had 
ever  found  any  one  of  them  dead  "  without  some  evident 
cause."  All  living  things  on  these  islands,  birds  and  all, 
even  the  carrion-buzzard,  are  of  a  tameness  in  the  ex- 
treme :  "  all  of  them  often  approached  sufficiently  near 
to  be  killed  with  a  switch,  a  cap,  or  a  hat — a  gun  is  here 
almost  superfluous ;  for  with  the  muzzle  I  (Mr.  Darwin) 
pushed  a  hawk  (the  carrion-buzzard)  off  the  branch  of  a 
tree ! " 

I  need  go  no  farther,  probatum  est ;  the  case  is  now 
complete.  This  archipelago,  whatever  it  was  in  the  way 
of  suggestion  to  Mr.  Darwin  himself,  can  hardly  be 
allowed,  so  far  as  I  see,  to  be  anything  better  than  a 
Mr.  Spenlow's  Jorkins  to  anybody  else.  As  for  "  the 
central  idea,  the  quintessence  of  Darwinism,"  the  pullu- 
lation  of  differences,  it  is  quite  possible,  as  Mr.  Darwin 
suggests,  that  there  might  be  "  a  bird  born  with  a  beak 
i^th  of  an  inch  longer  than  usual ; "  but  is  the  con- 
ception of  such  initial  step  enough  to  enable  us  to  picture 
even  in  imagination  the  eventual  production  of  all  those 
beaks,  to  say  nothing  of  the  various  birds  themselves  ? 
Individual  does  differ  from  individual ;  no  two  indivi- 
duals are  perfectly  alike.  Manifestly,  then,  there  is 
development  of  difference,  of  difference  after  difference, 
of  differences  infinite.  But  is  it  so  certain,  as  Mr. 
Darwin    will    have    it,    that    difference    goes    on — that 


ACCIDENTAL  DIFFERENCE  THE  SOLE  CREATOR!        399 

difference  adds  to  itself — that  difference  never  stops — 
till  there  emerges — what? — its  own  opposite,  an  iden- 
tity, a  fixed  new  identity  that  actually  propagates  Its 
own  identity,  as  a  species,  before  onr  eyes,  illimitably  '. 
But  does  the  difference  go  on  only  so  '. — does  the  difference 
add  to  itself  only  so  ?  If  there  is  advance  of  difference 
into  a  new,  is  there  not  return  of  difference  into  the  old, 
identity?  We  can  see  the  latter  at  every  minute  of  the 
day,  and  on  all  sides  of  us ;  but  we  never  see  the  former 
— never  have  seen  the  former.  No  man,  not  even  a 
breeder,  has  ever  seen  the  former.  A  breeder,  if  he  is  to 
breed,  must  have  his  material  to  work  on;  he  knows 
that  to  effect  the  modifications  he  wants,  he  can  only 
take  advantage  of  what  is  already  there.  Nay,  ii  is  nol 
by  the  accumulation  of  differences  that  the  breeder 
effects  his  purposes,  but  by  the  accumulation  of  identities. 
If  he  wants  wool,  he  adds  wool  to  wool;  if  he  wants 
flesh,  he  adds  flesh  to  flesh;  if  he  wants  bone,  he  adds 
bone  to  bone;  if  he  wants  weight,  he  adds  weight  to 
weight;  if  he  wants  speed,  he  adds  speed  to  speed.  But 
do  as  he  may,  the  breeder  knows  well  that,  but  for  his 
artifices,  his  breeds  would  all  turn  back  again  to  whal 
they  were  at  first.  You  must  keep  the  coal  up,  if  you 
would  keep  the  fire  up.  But  with  all  his  skills,  and  all 
his  contrivances,  and  all  his  perseverances,  no  breeder  has 
ever  yet  produced  a  new  species.  We  do  not  deny,  any 
more  than  Kant,  that  nature  can  produce  new  -pedes: 
we  only  deny  that  nature  has  no  secret  fur  the  process 
but  the  accumulation  of  the  differences  of  accident.  We 
know  no  proof  of  this — toothed  bird-,  the  hipparion 
itself,  and  even  the  wonderful  "Otter"  sheep  notwith- 
standing. We  claim  design  for  nature,  whatever  we 
admit ! 

Mr.  Darwin  follows  up  his  suggestion  of  the  accident, 
the  chance,  of  his  100th  of  an  inch  more  than  usual,  in 


400  GIFFORD  LECTURE  THE  TWENTIETH. 

this  emphatic  way  (iii.  33) :  "  The- more  I  work,  the  more 
I  feel  convinced  that  it  is  by  the  accumulation  of  such 
extremely  slight  variations  that  new  species  arise."  That 
is  as  much  as  to  assert  that,  out  of  an  accidental  speck 
of  proteine,  the  accidental  pullulation  of  difference  (mere 
difference)  produced, — without  design, — mechanically,  as 
it  were, — you  and  me,  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  the 
respiration  of  the  lungs,  the  action  of  a  brain ! 

But  I  must  break  off  here :  these  lectures  are  now  at 
an  end.  It  was  to  expound  Natural  Theology  that  this 
place  was  given  me.  The  proofs  for  the  being  of  a  God 
are  Natural  Theology.  These  proofs  I  followed  histori- 
cally, on  the  affirmative  side,  with  some  fulness,  almost 
from  first  to  last.  On  the  negative  side,  I  had  to  make 
a  selection  of  what  history  offered  me  there ;  but  I 
endeavoured  to  meet  the  want  by  the  production  of  what, 
on  the  whole,  are  generally  and  publicly  esteemed  the 
three  authoritative  degrees  of  the  relative  argumentation. 

I  beg  to  thank  you  for  the  great  attention  with  which 
you  have  always  honoured  me,  and  to  bid  you  respect- 
fully, Farewell ! 


INDEX. 


Alll'AI.UAlIMAN    III.,    275. 

Abstraction,  136. 
Action  and  reaction,  49, 

Jity,  126. 
Addison,  224,  231. 
Advanced  views,  14,  l.r>,  222. 
Affirmative,  35. 
Agia,  22G,  230. 
Agnosticism,  15. 
Agrippa,  68. 
Alexandria,  166. 
Alphonso  of  Castile.  ~. 7.  272. 
Amalrich,  117. 
Analogy,  268. 

joras,  39,   46-49,  55,  60, 

67,  72,  73,  77,  SO,  220,  346. 
Anselm,  33,  34,  45,  173,  177-1 
Antisthenes,  345,  347. 
Antithesis,  49,  160. 
Aviosto,  236. 
Aristophanes,  221. 
Aristotle,  33,  41,  45,  49,  54,  60 

77,  SO,  82,  S3,  96,  97.  12  1- 

220,  236,  238,  346-3  1'.'. 
Aristoxenus,  220. 
Arnobius,  180. 
Ascent,  The,  137. 
Astronomy,  32,  33,  76-80. 
Athanasius,  181,  347. 
Atheists,  219,  221,  283,  37  \. 
Athenagoras,  182. 
Attraction,  50. 
Aufklarung,   14-10,  115  124, 

163,  215,  232. 
Augustine,  23,  28,  32-34,  1-'.'. 

.  347. 
Augustus,  108. 
AulusGellus,  29.  L60,  L78. 


.  66, 
156, 


14."., 
193, 


BA(  on,  Lobd,   19,  .".l 

96,  117,  220. 
Baghavad  Gita,  • 
Bakewell,  Robert,  331,  332. 
Basil, 

Baumgarten,  1 1 s. 
Baur,I\  C,  182. 
Beaks,  3s7  sq.,  392,  39 
Bear,  360. 
Begnff,  11,  12,  13. 
Bekker,  154. 
Belief,  17. 

Bequest,  T\ 

Berkeley,  67,  249,  354. 

:.   St..   202. 

Bible,  The,  24,   28,    36,   1  19,   17". 

181,  308, 
Biese,  L53. 

Blackie,  Professor,  156,  17."'. 
Blair,    Dr.    Bug]  . 

232,  235,  244. 
Blind] 

ius,  190. 
Bonitz,  151. 
Hunks,  Sacred,  18. 
Boston, 

I.  10^,  109. 

>'■  /.  Tip'. 

How.]:.  .    39  1. 

Brahmanism, 
Brandis,  15  i. 
19. 
Bridgewater  Tn 
Brougham,  Lord, 
Brown,  Dr.  Thomas,  1. 
.-.7:;. 

ting,  17. 


402 


INDEX. 


Bruno,  G.,  69. 

Buckle,  19,  49,  108,  223,  239. 

Button,  150. 

Burke,  241. 

Burns,  284. 

Burton,  280,  281. 

Byron,  144,  373. 

Bythos,  37. 


Oesak,  Julius,  174,  272. 

Caesar,  The,  164. 

Cain,  16,  19. 

I  !aligula,  272. 

Calvin,  117. 

Carlyle,  16,  17,  74,  80,  81,  120-122 

204,  213,  273,  276,  284. 
Carpenter,  Dr.,  370. 
Catechism,  The  Shorter,  12,  13. 
Categories,  68,  294  sqq. 
Catullus,  234. 
Causality,  278-283,  292  sqq. 
Causes,  the  Four,  41-44,  49-52,  54, 

103,  137. 
Cervantes,  17. 

Chambers,  Dr.  R.,  353,  361. 
<  harlemont,  Lord,  233. 
Charles  II.,  49. 
Charles  V.,  274. 
Chaucer,  231. 
Chemistry,  32,  33. 
China,  36. 
Chinese,  The,  369. 
Christianity,  27,  34,  166,  204,  208. 
Chrysippus,  160,  171,  257. 
Chrysostom,  180. 
Church,  The,  214. 
Churches,  The  Three,  10,  11. 
Cicero,  23,  28,  108,  148,  168-177, 

220,  225,  236,  245. 
Clarke,  25,  124,  260. 
Cleanthes,  171. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  180,  347. 
Colebrooke,   36,   37,    39,    40,    102, 

280,  345. 
Coleridge,  14,  82. 
Comparison,  277. 
Condillac,  82. 

Conditions,  335  sqq.,  391  sqq. 
Confucius,  18. 
Consensirs  gentium,  ]  79. 
Constantine,  161. 

Contingency,    69,    111,     112,    125, 
126,  260,  305  sq.,  351  sq. 


Comeille,  231. 
Corporeity,  49. 
Cosmological  Argument,    45.    124, 

260  sqq. 
Cowley,  234. 

Creation,  344  sqq.,  356,  393  sq. 
Cudworth,    25,    44,    68,  220,   345, 

346,  347. 
Cuvier,  133,  154,  155. 
Cyril  of  Alexandria,  180. 


Dallas,  W.  S.,  372. 

Dante,  236. 

Darwin,     Charles,     127-134,     155, 

219,  278,  323-400. 
Darwin,  Dr.  Erasmus,  273,  323-400 

passim. 
Darwin,  Mr.  Erasmus,  365. 
Darwins,  The,  365. 
David  of  Dinant,  117. 
Davidson,  Thomas,  337. 
Day,  The— its  roar,  201. 
Degrees,  The  Three,  323,  324. 
Democritus,  159,  219. 
Demosthenes,  225. 
De  C'uincey,  28. 
Derham,  25,  36. 

Descartes,  22,  50,  51,  71,  117,  1S8, 
193,  377. 

Design,  57,  93-96,  100,   114,  127- 
137,  150,  168-175. 

Diagoras,  220. 

Dicrearchus,  220. 

Dickens,  396. 

Difference,  103,  353  sqq.,  398-400. 

Diogenes,  Apol.,  87. 

Diogenes  Lrertius,  60,  158,  221. 

Douglas,  226-230. 

Dryden,  228,  231,  232. 


EAR.     See  Eye. 

East,  The,  166. 

Eckhart,  Meister,  320. 

Ecstasy,  161. 

Egyptians,  29,  369. 

Eleatics,  219. 

Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert,  244. 

Elliott,  Ebenezer,  215. 

Emerson,  4,  82,  199,  200,  206,  210, 

212,  213. 
Empedocles,  134,  219,  270,  384. 
Encyclopedists,  120. 


INDEX. 


40:5 


Energy,  50. 

Engadine,  The..  236. 

Ennius,  168. 

Epictetus,  161. 

Epicurus,  23,  158,  "271. 

Epigoniad,  239. 

Erdmann,  72,  142,  186,  192,  281. 

Erigena,  Scotus,  267,  268,  282. 

Essay,  The  Little  Moral  Philosophy, 

183. 
Esse,  vivere,  intelligere,  25,  319. 
Essenes,  167. 
Ethicality,  88-91. 
Eusebius  of  I  iaesarea,  181. 
Evil,  160,  270  sqq. 
Existence,  62. 
Externalization,  69. 
Eye  and  Ear,  77,  78,  84-87,  95,  101. 


Faith,  16,  215,  2]  7. 

Falklands,  The,  393. 

Families,  364. 

Fanciers,  0.37. 

Faroes,  The,  393. 

Fathers,  The,  24,  27,  106,  177,  17<>, 

182,  346. 
Fenelon,  25. 
Ferguson,  210.  -J.  12. 
Fichte,  80,  151. 
Fielding,  10,  224. 
Filament,  360. 
Finches,  385  sqq. 
Finite,  191. 
Fleming,  Dr.,  ISO. 
Fontenelle,  236. 
Forces,  48,  49. 
Form,  43,  44,  54,  68,  136,  282,  283, 

303  sq. 
Franzius,  154. 
Freewill,  13. 
Fronde,  273. 


Galapagos,  The,  332  sqq. 

Gassendi,  51. 
Gaunilo,  185. 
Genealogies,  355,  376-400. 

.  :''7. 
Genlis,  Mme.  de,  145. 
George  IV.,  223. 
Germany,  240. 

Gibbon,   118,  120,  202,   22  1,    240, 
211,  275. 


Gifford,  Lord,  3-11,  32,  38,  I 

197--;]  '■. 
Gifford,  \\\,  223. 
Gnostics,  37,  38,  167. 
Cud,  5,  6,  19,  22,   23,   24, 

37,  38,  58,  62,  6:;.   7",   126,  138, 

117,  192,  193,  252. 
Gods,  Pagan,  28,  29,  98. 
Goethe,  93,  119,  121. 
Goldsmith,  183,  224,  232. 
.  The,  106,  107,  160. 
Gray,  Asa,  0-J7,  341,  342,  057,  369, 

371,  377. 

.  133,  346. 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  181. 
Grew,  25,  36. 
Grote,  67,  267. 


II  \M  \N\,    118. 

Happiness,  145,  213,  274,  277. 
Hearne,  360. 
Heavens,  The,  7  7. 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  18,  19. 
Hegel,  15,  187,  280,  319. 
Henry,  241. 
Heraclil 
Herder,  118. 
Hi     h   1,  Sir  John,  2 
Hesiod,  37,  40. 
Hexaemeron,  25. 
Heyder,  1 5  1. 
Hilary,  :;17. 

History,  Course  of,  162. 
Hobbes,  II,  71,  117. 
I  fodgson,  7 1. 
Hoffmann,  -';:''7. 
Holbach,  d',  -J.'.-. 
.  John,  226, 
Homer,  153,  172,  225. 
Hooker,  sir  Joseph,  328,  330,  306, 

337,  341,  365,  370. 
Horace,  236. 
Humboldt,  1  1'.'. 
Hume,  14.  1'.'.  .".7.  82,  108,  117,  150, 

22qj  222  285  passim  I 
Hutcheson,  -i-i.  249. 
Huxley,  ii2l,   338-343,   37 

377. 
Hymn,  Aristotle's,  139. 


I  250  sqq.,  299  sqq.,  368. 

Identity,  103,  27'.'. 


404 


INDEX. 


Imagination,  361  sqq. 
Immanent,  60,  64,  152. 
Immortality,  7 2. 

India,  36,  37,  38,  39,  280,  345,  347. 
Infinite,  34,  35,  38,  191. 
Iremeus,  179. 
Isocrates,  174. 
Isolation,  387  sqq. 


Jacobi,  118. 

Jardine,  Sir  William,  386. 

Jeffrey,  Francis,  223. 

Jehovah,  179,  308  sq. 

Jenyns,  370. 

Jericho,  19. 

Jerome,  181. 

Jews,  18,  36. 

John  of  Damascus,  181. 

Johnson,   Dr.,   108-112,   183,    224, 

275. 
Jonson,  Ben,  230,  231. 
Jorkins,  Mr.,  396. 
Jnlian,  Apost.,  ISO. 
Juvenal,  29. 


Kant,  45,  74-77,  80,  93,  101,  144, 
219,  233,  238,  286-324,  369,  391. 
Kepler,  32. 
Klopstock,  118. 
Krause,  326,  372,  374. 


Lactantius,  180. 

Lagrange,  57. 

Lamarck,  373. 

Lamballe,  Princesse  de,  273. 

Lao-tse,  36. 

Larm,  Des  Tages,  201. 

Latinity,  174. 

Lavater,  118. 

Law,  No  innate,  of  evolution,  390. 

Lecturer's  purview,  7. 

Lectures,  The,  how  laid  out,  400. 

Leibnitz,  22,  74,  75,  125,  127,  188. 

Leonidas,  222. 

Lessing,  118. 

Leucippus,  159. 

Lewes,  185,  360,  374. 

Light,  78,  85. 

Linnajus,  133. 

Lizards,  396. 

Locke,  117,  249,  287. 


Xoyoi  %1/tio;,  26/ . 

Louis  XI.,  113. 
Lucretius,  236. 
Luther,  202. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,   328,  336,  337, 
341,  355,  370,  371,  384. 


Macatjlay,  Lokd,  223. 
Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  223. 
Macrobius,  175. 
Mahometanism,  12. 
Maimonides,  Moses,  71. 
Malebranche,  259. 
Malthus,  332. 
Mankind,  141. 
Matter,   43,   44,   54,   68,   136,   261, 

267,  303  sq. 
Maxwell,  Clerk,  49. 
Mendelssohn,  118. 
Mesmerism,  215. 
Metaphysic,  33,  51-56. 
Meteyard,  Miss,  326. 
Method,  358. 
Michelet,  154. 
Middle  Ages,  24,  25,  27,  106,  200, 

320. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  222,  223. 
Milton,  28,  57,  150,  184,  185,  231, 

232. 
Mind,  69. 

Minucius  Felix,  173. 
Miracles,  17,  18,  214. 
Modification,  344  sq<i. 
Moliere,  236. 
Monks,  their  life,  202. 
Monotheism,  31,  34,  35,  36,  98. 
Monsters,  394  sqq. 
Montaigne,  24,  25. 
Morality,  88,  91. 
Mormonism,  12. 
Mover,  A  First,  138. 
Mud-fish,  355,  356. 
Muir,  Dr.  John,  39. 
Mukharji,  Ras  biliari,  37. 
Miiller,  Fritz,  372. 
Miiller,  J.  v.,  154. 
Miiller,  Max,  39. 
Murchison,  Sir  R.  I.,  353. 


Nat-oleon,  150. 
Natural  Science,  32,  33. 
Nature,  67,  68,  69,  143. 


[NDEX. 


405 


Necessity,  111,  266. 
Negation,  101. 
Negative, 
Neo-Platonists,  161,  167. 

37  !■ 
Nice,  <  louncil  of,  161. 
Nicolai,  118. 
NTo-God  .Men,  16. 
Nous,  16  and  passim,  61-67,  ! 
Numenins,  106. 


r,  102,  349  sqq. 
Ogle,  Dr.,  133,  135. 

<  Ine  and  many. 

Ontological  Argument,  3I>.  10,    15, 

182  193,  259  sqq. 
Origen,  347. 

( >rigin,  The,  of  species,  3S4. 
Othello,  227-231. 
Ovid,  236. 

<  tysters,  353. 


Paine,  Thomas,  15,  16. 

Palay,  Dr.,  25,  26,  30,  36, 168,  368. 

Paley,  Mr.,  40. 

Pantheism,  62,  63,  64,  207,  211. 

Parnell,  234. 

Parsons,  Professor,  353,  384. 

Particular,  70. 

Pentateuch,  356. 

Percy,  73. 

Pericles,  221. 

Phmlo,  The,  46,  48. 

Philip  of  Opuntium,  100. 

Philips,  Jt'hi],  373. 

Philister,  226. 

Philo  Judaeus,  106,  172. 

Philosophy,   31,   35,    53,  81,    209, 

222. 

Philosophy  of  religion,  26,  27. 

Physical  science,  32,  3:;,  34,  239. 

Physical  theories,  7:;. 

Physics,  53. 

Picture-thinking,  369. 

Plato,  47.  54.  65,  68,  82,  02,  96- 

114,  159,  300. 
Pliny,  29,  177. 
Plotinus,  32. 

Plutarch,  161,  220,  257,  258. 
Polytheism,  31,  34. 
Pompey,  1"-. 
Pope,  1S3,  226,  231,  232,  234,  236. 


Porphyry,  32. 
Positivo,  11,  1'-',  13. 
Potentiality,  126. 
Practice,  ill. 
l'rantl,  151,  174,  1S5. 
I  .  107. 

Pri    s,  Tin',  16. 

The,   30,   31, 
1-2  1!':;,  218,  256-324. 
Proteine,  356,  360. 
Protoplasm,  A  s  j-;0. 

Pygmies,  •'!'.'•">. 
Pythagoreans,  23,  CI,  167,  21'.'. 


Quantity,  85. 
Quintilian,  234,  213,  246. 


Rabelais,  282. 

Racine,  22-;.  227,  231, 

Rasselas,  ^7.">. 

Rationalism,  13-16. 

Ray,  25 

Raymund  of  Sebonde,  24,  . 

36,  218. 
Reason,  1:!,.  II. 
Reflection,  162. 

12,  56,  74,80,  181 

282,  2S9. 
Reimarus,  1  I  3. 
Religion,  4,  S,  11,  26,  31.  35,   107, 

203. 

ion,  Pagan, 
Religion,  Philosophi     of,  26-30. 
Repulsion,  50. 
Revolution,  163. 
Revolution,  French,  16. 
Ricardo,  222. 
Richl  v   .1.  !'..  I  19,  !    7 
Roar,  Thr,  of  the  day, 
Robertson,  L83,  224,  2:::..  21". 
Rome,  I'1'  I. 


Sacred  Books,  1^. 

Sail-   Ml  i 

Sandford,  Sir  D.  K.,  223. 
Scepticism,  163. 
Schellii 
Schiller,  93,  119. 

-ti.-s,  22. 


40G 


INDEX. 


Scotch,  The,  239. 

Scott,  284. 

Scriptures,  18,  19. 

Schwegler,  67,  151,  165. 

Seals,  360. 

Sects,  The,  157-168. 

Secularism,  15. 

Sedgewick,  Professor,  369. 

Seghed,  The  Emperor,  275. 

Selection,   Natural,  325,  330    sqq. 

and  passim. 
Sender,  118. 
Semper,  337. 
Seneca,  177. 
Septimius  Severus,  275. 
Sextus  Empiricus,  171. 
Seward,  Miss,  326. 
Shakespeare,  59,  210,  226-232. 
Simon  of  Tournay,  117. 
Singular  effect,  255  sqq. 
Skeptics,  157. 
Smith,   Adam,  44,  203,  222,  224, 

240,  244,  245,  262,  271,  321. 
Smith,  Sydney,  337. 
Smollett,  48,  224,  240,  241. 
Socinians,  117. 

Socrates,  46-50,  65,  87-96,  99. 
Sophists,  115-124. 
Sophists,  The,  Note  on,  165. 
Sophocles,  227. 
Soul,  153. 
Sound,  78,  80,  85. 
Sound  views,  7. 
Space,  74-76,  83,  294  sqq. 
Sparta,  222. 

Species,  330  sqq.,  386. 

Speculation,  140. 

Spenser,  231. 

Spinoza,  14,  63,  71,  72,  117,   206, 
207,  211,  281. 

Squinting,  362. 

Stahr,  154. 

Stanley,  395. 

State,  The,  166. 

Stewart,     Duc;ald,   108,    109,    183, 
281,  282,  268,  373. 

Stillingfleet,  25. 

Stobo,  241. 

Stoics,  159. 

Strahan,  244,  245. 

Strato,  220. 

Struggle,    332,   and  passim,    396- 
400. 

Style,  223  sqq.,  243  sqq.,  248. 


Subject,  102,  349  sqq. 
Subjective,  211. 
Substance,  63,  206,  207. 
Suetonius,  173. 
Superstition,  107-115. 
Swift,  Dr.,  235. 
Syzygies,  37. 


Tacitus,  177,  236. 
Tages,  Des,  der  laute  Larrn,  201. 
Tailor,  The,  278. 
Tasso,  236. 
Taste,  225. 
Tauler,  320. 
Tavlor,  Thomas,  37. 
Teeth,  96,  129-133. 
Teleological  argument,  38,   39,  40, 
45,  46,  56,  93,  262-285,  299-305. 
Terence,  234. 
Tertullian,  180. 
Thales,  219. 
Theologies,  23. 
Theology,  21,  33. 

Theology,  Natural,  6,  19,  21-26, 
30-35",  41,  42,  53,55,56,  67,  79, 
80,  84,  170,  198,  256-258,  287. 

Theophilus,  182. 

Theory,  141. 

Therapeutse,  167. 

Thomson,  Dr.  A.,  173. 

Thomson,  James,  87,  184. 

Time,  74,  75,  76,  80,  83,  104,  105, 
149,  294  sqq. 

Tortoises,  396. 

Trades,  The,  277. 

Trajan,  272. 

Transcendent,  60,  152. 

Trendelenburg,  1 54. 

Trinity,  The,  27,  28,  105,  106, 137. 


Ueberweg,  185. 
Understanding,  14. 
Unity,  153. 
Universal,  69,  70. 
Universe,  70. 


Valentines,  37. 
Varro,  23,  24. 
Vedas,  18. 
Vestiges,  The,  353. 
Vinnius,  284. 


INDEX. 


407 


Vrgil,  225,  231,  236,  284. 
Voet,  284. 

Voltaire,  14,  19,  117. 
Vorstellung,  11,  12,  13. 


Wagner,  336,  391. 
Waitz,  154. 
Waller,  231. 
Weathering,  73. 
IT.  stminsfer  Rt  vu  w,  223. 
Whale  and  Bear,  360. 
Wilkie,  230,  37::. 
Wilkins,  373. 


Wolff,  46,  188,  192. 
Wordsworth,  275. 

World,  The,  a  life,  67,  6S,  69,  77. 
84-87. 


Xenophon,  17,  92,  93. 
VuiM.,  Dr.,  242. 


Zeller,  67,  15  1. 
Zorzi,  68. 


UOBR1SOM    ANI>  <;IBB.    PRIXTEES,   BDINB)  BOH 


T.  and  T.  Claris  Publications. 


lotze's  microcosmus. 

Just  published,  Third  Edition,  in  Two  Vols.,  £vo,  price  36s., 

MICROCOSMUS: 

CONCERNING  MAN  AND  HIS  RELATION  TO  THE  WOULD. 
By    HERMANN    LOTZE. 


Contents:— Book   T.   The   Body.     II.  The  Soul.      III.   Life.     IV.   Man. 
V.  Mind.    VI.  The  Microcosmic  Order ;  or,  The  Course  of  Human  Life. 

VII.  History.     VIII.  Progress.     IX.  The  Unity  of  Things. 
These  are  indeed. two  masterly  volumes,  vigorous  in  intellectual  power, 
and  translated  with  rare  ability.  .  .  .  Tliis  work  will  doubtless  find  a  place 
on  the  shelves  of  all  the  foremost  thinkers  and  students  of  modern  times.' — 
Evangelical  Magazine. 

'  Tin'  English  public  have  now  before  them  the  greatest  philosophic  work 
produced  in  Germany  by  the  generation  just  past.  The  translation 
an  opportune  time,  for  the  circumstances  of  English  thought,  just  at  the 
present  moment,  are  peculiarly  those  with  which  Lotze  attempted  to  deal 
when  ho  wrote  his  "  Microcosmus,"  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  .  .  .  Few 
philosophic  books  of  the  century  are  so  attractive  both  in  style  ami  matter.' — 
At  hum  a  m, 

1  Lotze  is  the  ablest,  the  most  brilliant,  and  most  renowned  of  the  i  rerman 

philosophers  of  to-day.  .  .  .  He  has  rendered  invaluable  and  splendid  service 

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By  Dr.  FR.  H.  REUSCH. 

Eevised  and  Corrected  by  the  Author. 

Cranslatru'  from  tfjc  JFourtlj  Ctittioix 

By  KATHLEEN  LYTTELTON. 

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<  Gladstone. 

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Le  to  read  itwithoul  obtaining  larger  views  of  theplogy,  and  more 
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Review. 


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Just  published,  in  deiny  8vo,  price  16s., 

HISTORY 

OF 

THE  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

FROM   THE   REFORMATION  TO   KANT. 
By  BERNHARD  PUNJER. 

(Translated   from   tJje   Grrman 
By  W.  HASTIE,  B.D. 

amitTj  a  ^rcfarc 
By  ROBERT  FLINT,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

PROFESSOR   OF   DIVINITY,    UNIVERSITY   OF    EDINBURGH. 


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dom, on  the  philosophy  of  religion.  He  must  be  an  excessively  learned  man 
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Preface. 

'  Piiujer's  "  History  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  "  is  fuller  of  information 
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of.  The  writing  in  it  is,  on  the  whole,  clear,  simple,  and  uninvolved.  The 
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KANT'S  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LAW. 
Recently  published,  in  crown  8vo,  prio 

THE    PHI LOSOPHY    OF    LA  W. 

AN  EXPOSITION  OF  THE  I'l  ffDAMENTAL   PBINCEPLES  "1 
JURISPRUDENCE  AS  Tin:  SCIENCE  OF  BIGHT. 

BY    LMMAXUEL    KANT. 

TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  GERMAN  BY   W.  HASTIt,   B.D. 

lI  have  read  t lie  Preface  with  great  interest  and  entire  concurrence.     I 

anticipate  the  best  results  from  turning  the  thoughts  of  <>ur  young  men  back 
to  the  fountainhead  of  all  sound  speculation  since  the  French  Revolution.' — 
Professor  LOBIMEB,  LL.D.,  University  of  Ediuburgh. 

'  I  have  examined  one  or  two  important  passages,  and  think  it  an  excellent 
translation.  I  Bhall  have  much  pleasure  in  recommending  it  to  my  Students.1 
— Professor  Caibd,  LL.D.,  Glasgow. 

'  The  bonk  will  be  helpful  to  us  in  Philosophy  <  'lasses,  specially  Ethical,  as 
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'  Treffliche   Uebei  Dr.  •'.   Vob    Holtzendobff,   University  of 

Munich. 

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'An  excellent  translation  of  this  great  work  in  its  complete  form  .  .  . 
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approach   the  main   body  of  the  work  with   BJ  mpathy  and   intelligOl 

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f^istoricallg   anti   IZxctjctt'callo  (Cansiticrcti. 

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Br   Rev.    D.    DOUGLAS    BANNERMAN,    D.D. 

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ST.  JOHN'S  GOSPEL 


THr  SYNOPTICAL  GOSPELS.  AND  THE 

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V  Inime    TTT  VolVMB   IV. 

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THE    LIFE    AND     WRITINGS    OF 
ALEXANDER     VINET. 

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ELEMENTS     OF     LOGIC 

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LECTURER   IN  MORAL   SCIENCES,    GIRTON   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE  ; 
JOINT -TRANSLATOR   AND    EDITOR   OF   LOTZE'S    '  MlCrOCOSMUS.' 

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<  >f  it s voluminous  records,  Miss  Jones  finds  plenty  to  say  that  is  freshly  worked 
out  bv  independent  thought.  There  is  a  spring  of  vitality  and  vigour  per- 
vading and  vitalizing  the  aridity  of  even  these  abstract  discussions.'— 
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Just  published,  in  demy  8vo,  price  9s., 

KANT,     LOTZE,     AND     RITSGHL: 

gl  Critical  (Examination. 

By   LEONHARD    STAHLIN,    Bayreuth. 
Translated  by  Principal  SIMON,  Edinburgh. 

'  In  a  few  lines  it  is  impossible  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of  this  learned  work, 
which  goes  to  the  very  root  of  the  philosophical  and  metaphysical  speculations 
of  recent  years.' — Ecclesiastical  Gazette. 

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